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BRAVE 'DEEDS 




S ERI E S 




Sergeant Hunter Charging the Confederates 



Brave Deeds of 
Union Soldiers 



By 
SAMUEL SCOVILLE, Jr. 




PHILADELPHIA 

GEORGE W. JACOBS & COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS 






Copyright, 1915, by 

George W. Jacobs & Company 

Published November, igi^ 



All right i reserved 
Printed in U. S. A. 




m\\ 20 1915 
>GI.A416494 



To Theodore Roosevelt 

Commissioner, Governor, Colonel and 
President, who believes in peace with 
honor, but never in peace at the price 
of righteousness and whose ozvn life 
has been full of deeds of physical and 
moral courage, this book of brave 
deeds is dedicated. 



Foreword 

In these days when even our skies are shadowed 
by wars and rumors of wars, it is fitting to re- 
member what men and women and children of 
our blood have done in the past. In this chronicle 
have been included not alone the great deeds of 
great men, but also the brave deeds of common- 
place people. May the tale of their every-day 
heroism be an inspiration to each one of us to do 
our best endeavor when we find ourselves in the 
crisis-times of life. 





Contents 




I. 


The Bare Brigade . . . . 


II 


11. 


The Escape from Libby Prison . 


19 


III. 


Two Against a City . . . . 


39 


IV. 


Boy Heroes 


51 


V. 


The Charge of Zagonyi 


79 


VI. 


The Locomotive Chase 


95 


VII. 


Sheridan's Ride 


121 


VIII. 


The Bloody Angle . . . . 


141 


IX. 


Heroes of Gettysburg 


163 


X. 


The Lone Scout .... 


185 


XI. 


Running the Gauntlet 


, 213 


XII. 


Forgotten Heroes 


. 229 


XIII. 


The Three Hundred Who Saved A^ 






Army 


• 253 


XIV. 


The Rescue of the Scouts . 


• 273 


XV. 


The Boy-General 


• 3" 


XVI. 


Medal-of-Honor Men 


. 325 



Illustrations 



Sergeant Hunter Charging the Confederates 




Frontispiece 


Libby Prison ..... 


Facing page 24 


Captain Bailey and Midshipman Read Fac- 
ing the New Orleans Mob . 




46 


Sheridan Hurrying to Rally his Men 




" 136 


The Battle of Gettysburg 




174/ 


Corporal Pike ..... 




** 190 , 


In the Woods Near Chancellorsville 




" 264 


Attacking the Inner Traverses of Fort 
Fisher ..... 




** 5 20 • 



CHAPTER I 
The Bare Brigade 



CHAPTER I 

THE BARE BRIGADE 

Kipling wrote one of his best stories on how 
Mulvaney and his captain with an undressed com- 
pany swam the Irriwaddy River in India and cap- 
tured Lungtungpen. It was a brave deed. The 
average man can't be brave without his clothes. 

In the Civil War there was one unchronicled 
fight where a few naked, shoeless men swam a 
roaring river, marched through a thorny forest and 
captured a superior and entrenched force of the 
enemy together with their guns. This American 
Lungtungpen happened on the great march of 
General Sherman to the sea. He had fought the 
deadly and lost battle of Kenesaw Mountain, and 
failing to drive out the crafty Confederate General 
Johnson by direct assault outflanked him and forced 
him to fall back. Then the Union Army cele- 
brated the Fourth of July, 1864, by the battle of 
Ruffs Station and drove Johnson back and across 
the Chattahoochee River. The heavy rains had 



14 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOL DIERS 

so swollen this river that all the fords were impas- 
sable, while the Confederates had destroyed all 
boats for miles up and down the river to prevent 
them from being used by the Union Army and 
had settled down for a rest from their relentless 
pursuers. General McCook was commanding the 
part of the Union line fronting direcdy on the 
river. Orders came from General Sherman to 
cross at Cochran's Ford and Colonel Brownlow of 
the First Tennessee Regiment was ordered to carry 
out this command. He was the son of Fighting 
Parson Brownlow and had the reputation of not 
knowing what fear was. The attempt was made 
at three o'clock in the morning. It was raining in 
torrents and the men at the word of command 
dashed into the river. The water kept getting 
deeper and deeper and the bottom proved to be 
covered with great boulders over which the horses 
stumbled and round which the cross torrents 
foamed and rushed. When the men had finally 
reached the middle of the river and were swimming 
for dear life, suddenly a company of Confederates 
on the other side opened up on them at close 
range. As the bullets zipped and pattered through 
the water, the floundering, swimming men turned 



THE BARE BRIGADE 15 

around and made the best of their way back, feel- 
ing that this was an impossible crossing to make. 
Once safely back they deployed on the bank and 
kept up a scattering fire all that morning against 
the enemy. 

As the day wore on, Colonel Dorr, who com- 
manded the brigade, made his appearance and 
inquired angrily why the First Tennessee was not 
on the other side and in possession of the opposite 
bank. Colonel Brownlow explained that he had 
made the attempt, that there was no ford and that 
to attempt to make a swimming charge through 
the rough water and in the face of an entrenched 
enemy would be to sacrifice his whole regiment 
uselessly. Colonel Dorr would listen to no ex- 
planations. 

" If you and your men are afraid to do what 
you're told, say so and I'll report to General Sher- 
man and see if he can't find some one else," he 
shouted and rode off, leaving Colonel Brownlow 
and his command in a fighting frame of mind. 
The former called nine of his best men to the rear 
and it was some time before he was calm enough 
to speak. 

" Boys," he said at last, " we've got to cross 



i6 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

that river. It's plain it can't be forded. We've 
no pontoons and I am not going to have my 
men slaughtered while they swim, but you fellows 
come with me and we'll drive those Rebs out of 
there before dark." 

He then gave directions for the rest of his men 
to keep up a tremendous fire to divert the atten- 
tion of the enemy. In the meanwhile he and his 
little squad marched through the brush to a point 
about a mile up the river behind a bend. There 
they stripped to the skin and made a little raft of 
two logs. On this they placed their carbines, 
cartridge boxes and belts and swam out into the 
rough water, pushing the little raft in front of 
them. It was hard going. The water was high, 
and every once in a while the fierce current would 
dash and bruise some of the men against the 
boulders which were scattered everywhere along 
the bed of the river. The best swimmers, how- 
ever, helped the weaker ones and they all worked 
together to keep the precious raft right side up 
and their ammunition and rifles dry. After a tre- 
mendous struggle they finally reached the oppo- 
site bank without having seen any Confederates. 
There they lined up, strapped on their cart- 



THE BARE BRIGADE 17 

ridge belts, shouldered their carbines and started 
to march through the brush. Every step they 
took over the sharp stones and twigs and thorns 
was agony and the men relieved themselves by 
using extremely strong language. 

" No swearing, men I " said Colonel Brownlow, 
sternly. 

At that moment he stepped on a long thorn 
and instantly disobeyed his own order. He halted 
the column, extracted the thorn and amended his 
order. 

" No swearing, men, — unless it's absolutely nec- 
essary," he commanded. 

They limped along through the brush until 
they reached a road that led to the ford some 
four hundred yards in the rear of the enemy 
whom they could see firing away for dear life 
at the Union soldiers on the other side. The 
Confederate forces consisted of about fifty men. 
Colonel Brownlow and his nine crept through the 
brush as silently as possible until they were within 
a few yards of the unconscious enemy. Then 
they straightened up, cocked their carbines, 
poured in a volley and with a tremendous yell 
charged down upon them. The Confederates 



i8 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

upon receiving this unexpected attack from the 
rear sprang to their feet, but when they saw the 
ten white ghostly figures charge down upon 
them, yelling like madmen, it was too much for 
their nerves and they scattered on every side. 
Twelve of them were captured. The last one 
was a freckle-faced rebel who tried to hide behind 
a tree. When seen, however, he came forward 
and threw down his gun. 

" Well, Yanks, I surrender," he said, " but it 
ain't fair. You ought to be ashamed to go 
charging around the country this way. If you'd 
been captured, we'd have hung you for spies be- 
cause you ain't got any uniforms on." 

Colonel Brownlow hustled his prisoners up the 
river to the raft and made them swim across in 
front of them and then reported to General Mc- 
Cook that he had driven the enemy out of the 
rifle-pits, captured twelve men, one officer and two 
boats. Shortly afterward the Confederates with- 
drew from their position for, as some of the pris- 
oners explained, they felt that if the Yanks could 
fight like that undressed, there was no telling 
what they'd do if they came over with their 
clothes on. 



CHAPTER II 
The Escape From Libby Prison 



CHAPTER II 
THE ESCAPE FROM LIBBY PRISON 

It takes a brave man to face danger alone. It 
takes a braver man to face danger in the dark. 
This is the story of a man who was brave enough 
to do both. It is the story of one who by his 
dogged courage broke out of a foul grave when 
it seemed as if all hopes for life were gone and 
who rescued himself and one hundred and eight 
other Union soldiers from the prison where they 
lay fretting away their lives. 

Libby Prison, the Castle Despair of captured 
Union officers, stood upon a hilltop in Richmond, 
the capital and center of the Confederacy. It 
was divided into three sections by solid walls, 
also ringed around by a circle of guards and 
there seemed to be no hopes for any of the hun- 
dreds of prisoners to break out and escape. 

In September, 1863, Colonel Thomas Rose, of 
the 77th Pennsylvania Volunteers, was taken pris- 
oner at the terrible battle of Chickamauga. From 
the minute he was captured he thought of nothing 



22 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

else but of escape, although he had a broken foot 
which would have been enough to keep most 
men quiet. On the way to Richmond, he man- 
aged to crawl through the guards and escape 
into the pine-forests through which they were 
passing. There he wandered for twenty-four 
hours without food or water and suffering terribly 
from his wound. At the end of that time he was 
recaptured by a troop of Confederate cavalry 
and this time was carefully guarded and brought 
to Libby Prison. This prison was a three-story 
brick building which had formerly been occupied 
by Libby & Company as a ship-chandlery estab- 
lishment. There were several hundred Union 
officers imprisoned there when Colonel Rose 
arrived. First he was taken into the office of 
the commandant. Back of his desk was a United 
States flag fastened " Union down," an insult for 
every loyal Union man that had to pass through 
this office. 

" We'll teach you to take better care of the old 
flag," remarked Colonel Rose as he stood before 
the commandant's desk for examination. 

The commandant scowled at this prisoner, but 
Rose looked him in the eye without flinching. 



THE ESCAPE FROM LIBBY PRISON 23 

" You won't have a chance to do much teach- 
ing for some years," said the commandant at last, 
grimly, " and you'll learn a lot of things that you 
don't know now." 

As Colonel Rose went up the ladder which led 
to the upper rooms and his head showed above 
the floor, a great cry went up from the rest of the 
prisoners of "Fresh fish I fresh fish 1 fresh fish I " 
This was the way that each newcomer was re- 
ceived and sometimes he was hazed a little like 
any other freshman. 

Although not as bad as some of the prisons, 
Libby Prison was no health resort. At times 
there were nearly a thousand prisoners crowded 
in there with hardly standing room. At night 
they all lined up in rows and laid down at the 
word of command, so closely packed that the 
floor was literally covered with them. Each one 
had to go to bed and get up at the same time. 
These crowded conditions made for disease and 
dirt, and the place was alive with vermin. 

"Skirmish for gray-backs," was the morning 
call in Libby Prison before the men got up. Each 
prisoner then would sit up in his place, strip of! 
his outer garments and cleanse himself as much 



24 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

as possible from the crawling gray-backs, as they 
had nicknamed the vermin which attacked all 
alike. The food was as bad as the quarters. 
Soon after Rose arrived one man found a whole 
rat baked in a loaf of corn-cake which had been 
furnished as a part of his rations. The rat had 
probably jumped into the dough-trough while the 
corn-cake was being made and had been knocked 
in the head by the cook and worked into the cake. 
Another officer made himself one night a bowl of 
soup by boiling a lot of beans together with a 
fresh ham-bone. He set it aside to wait until 
morning so as to enjoy his treat by daylight. 
Afterward he was glad he did, for he found his 
soup full of boiled maggots. At times the men 
were compelled to eat mule-meat and sometimes 
were not even given that but had to sell their 
clothing to keep from starving. In each room 
was a single water faucet without basin or tub. 
This was all that perhaps a couple of hundred 
men had to use both for washing and drinking 
purposes. The death-rate from disease in these 
crowded quarters was, of course, terribly high. 

From the day Rose entered the prison he made 
up his mind that he would not die there like a sick 




Ph 



THE ESCAPE FROM LIBBY PRISON 25 

dog if there was any way of escape and there was 
not a moment of his waking hours in which he 
was not planning some way to get out. Although 
the prisoners were not supposed to have com- 
munication with each other or from outside, there 
was a complete system under which each one had 
news from all over the prison as well as from the 
outside world. This was done by a series of raps 
constituting the prison telegraph. As the guards 
usually visited the prison only at intervals in the 
daytime, the prisoners managed to pass back and 
forth down through the chimney throughout the 
whole prison in spite of locked doors and sup- 
posedly solid walls. Messages and money were 
frequently sent in from outside. A favorite trick 
was to wind greenbacks around a spool and then 
have the thread wound by machinery over this 
money. Gold pieces were sealed up in cans of 
condensed milk. Maps, compasses and other 
helps for escaping prisoners were sent in a box. 
In order to prevent suspicion of the fact that the 
box had a double bottom, two double bottoms 
were placed on the box side by side with a space 
between them. When the contents were turned 
out, the prison inspectors could see the light shin- 



26 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

ing through the bottom of the box and were thus 
convinced that there could be no double bottom 
there. Letters were sent in containing apparently 
harmless home-news. Between the lines, informa- 
tion as to routes and guards was written in lemon 
juice. This was invisible until exposed to heat, 
when the writing would show. 

Colonel Rose was placed in the topmost room 
of the eastern wing. This was named Upper 
Gettysburg. From there he saw workmen enter- 
ing a sewer in the middle of a street which led to 
the canal lying at the foot of the hill on which the 
prison stood. He at once decided to tunnel into 
this sewer and crawl through that into the canal 
which was beyond the line of the guards. With 
this plan in view, he began to explore the prison. 
One dark afternoon he managed to make his way 
down through the rooms to one of the dungeons 
underneath, which was known as Rat Hell. This 
had been used as a dead-house and was fairly 
swarming with rats. As he was fumbling around 
there he suddenly heard a noise and in a minute 
another man came in. Each thought the other 
was a guard, but finally it turned out that the 
intruder was a fellow-prisoner, a Kentucky major 



THE ESCAPE FROM LIBBY PRISON 27 

named Hamilton. This Major and Rose at once 
became fast friends and immediately planned a 
tunnel from a corner of Rat Hell after securing a 
broken shovel and two kitchen knives. They had 
no more than begun this, however, before altera- 
tions were made in the prison which cut them off 
from this dungeon. By this time the other pris- 
oners had noticed the midnight visits of Rose and 
Hamilton as well as their constant conferences 
together and it was buzzed around everywhere 
that there was a plot on hand to break out of 
Libby. For fear of spies or traitors, Rose decided 
to organize a company of the most reliable men 
and plan a dash out through one of the walls and 
the overpowering of the guards. Seventy-two 
men were sworn in and everything was arranged 
for the dash for freedom one cloudy night. The 
little band had all gathered in Rat Hell and sen- 
tries had been placed at the floor opening into the 
kitchen above. Suddenly footsteps were heard 
and the signal was given that the guards were 
making a tour of inspection of the prison. In 
perfect silence and with the utmost swiftness, each 
man went up the rope-ladder to the floor above 
and stole into his bed. Rose was the last man 



28 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

up. He managed to reach the kitchen and hide 
his rope-ladder about ten seconds before the 
officer of the guard thrust his lantern into the door 
of the lowest sleeping chamber. Rose had no 
time to lie down, but with great presence of mind 
sat at a table and stuck an old pipe into his mouth 
and nodded his head as if he had gone to sleep 
while sitting up and smoking. The guard stared 
at him for a moment and passed on. 

The next day the leaders decided that some 
news of the attempt must have reached the au- 
thorities outside to account for this sudden and un- 
usual visit. It was decided to raise the numbers 
and make an immediate attempt. The band was 
increased from seventy-two to four hundred and 
twenty. With the increase in numbers, however, 
there seemed to be a decrease of courage. Many 
of the officers feared that it was a hopeless plan 
for a crowd of unarmed men to break through a 
ring of armed guards and that such an attempt 
would merely arouse the town and they would be 
hemmed in, driven back and shot down in crowds 
inside the prison walls. Finally a vote was taken 
and it was decided to abandon this plan. 

Once more Rose and Hamilton found them- 



THE ESCAPE FROM LIBBY PRISON 29 

selves the only two left who were absolutely re- 
solved on an escape. After talking the matter 
over, they decided to begin another tunnel. This 
time they had only an old jack-knife and a chisel 
to work with and they could only work between 
ten at night and four in the morning. They 
started back of the kitchen fireplace and there 
removed twelve bricks and dug a tunnel down to 
Rat Hell so that they could reach this base with- 
out disturbing any other prisoners and without 
being exposed to detection by the guard. One 
would work and the other would watch. At 
dawn each day the bricks were replaced and 
the cracks filled in with soot. They had no idea 
of direction and this tunnel was nearly the death 
of Rose. The digging was done by him while 
Major Hamilton would fan air to him with his hat, 
but so foul was the air below ground that bits of 
candle which they had stolen from the hospital 
would go out at a distance of only four feet from 
the cellar wall. In spite of this terrible atmos- 
phere, Rose dug his tunnel clear down to the 
canal, but unfortunately went under the canal and 
the water rushed in and he had a narrow escape 
from being drowned. By this time both men were 



30 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

so nearly exhausted that they decided to take in 
helpers again. Thirteen men were chosen to work 
with them and were all sworn to secrecy. The 
flooded passage was plugged and a fresh one 
started in the direction of a small sewer which ran 
from a corner of the prison down to the main 
sewer beyond. Night after night in the mud and 
stench and reek underground they dug their 
tunnel. At last they reached the small sewer only 
to find that it was lined with wood. The only 
cutting tools they had were a few small pen- 
knives. With these they slowly whittled a hole 
through the wooden lining and the fourteen men 
were all in high hopes of an escape. The night 
came when only a few hours of work would be 
necessary to make a hole large enough to enter 
the small sewer. It was then hoped they could 
all crawl from this into the larger one and down 
into the canal safe past the guards. Once again 
they were all grouped shivering at the entrance to 
the tunnel, waiting for the man who was working 
inside to pass the word back that the opening was 
made. Suddenly the news came back that the 
entrance into the large sewer was barred by 
planks of solid, seasoned oak six inches thick. 



THE ESCAPE FROM LIBBY PRISON 31 

The chisel and the penknives were worn down to 
the handles. For thirty-nine nights these men 
had worked at the highest possible pitch under 
indescribable conditions. There was not an inch 
of steel left to cut with or an ounce of reserved 
strength to go on farther. Despairingly, the party 
broke up, put away the kits which they had prepared 
for the march and once again Rose and Hamilton 
were left alone by their discouraged comrades. 

After a day's rest, these two decided to start 
another tunnel in the north corner of the cellar 
away from the canal. This tunnel would come 
out close to the sentry beat of the guards, but 
Rose had noticed that this beat was nearly twenty 
yards long and it was decided that in the dark 
there would be a fair chance of slipping through 
unseen. Once again Rose and Hamilton started 
on this new task alone. They had finally ob- 
tained another chisel and this was the only tool 
which they had. Once more Rose did the dig- 
ging. Hamilton would fan with all his strength 
and Rose would work until he felt his senses go- 
ing, then he would crawl back into the cellar and 
rest and get his breath. The earth was dragged 
out in an old wooden cuspidor which they had 



32 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

smuggled down from their room and Hamilton 
would hide this under a pile of straw in the cellar. 
The tunnel became longer and longer, but Rose 
was nearly at the end of his strength. It was ab- 
solutely impossible to breathe the fetid air in the 
farther end of the tunnel, nor could Hamilton 
alone fan any fresh air to him. Once again, and 
with great difficulty, a new party of ten was or- 
ganized. These worked in shifts — one man dug 
and two or three fanned the air through the tun- 
nel with their hats, another man dragged the 
earth into the cellar and a fifth kept watch. The 
first five would work until exhausted and then 
their places would be taken by the second shift. 
They finally decided to work also by day and now 
the digging went on without interruption every 
minute of the twenty-four hours. Finally, the 
little band of exhausted workers had gone nearly 
fifty feet underground. They were on the point 
of breaking down from absolute exhaustion. The 
night-shift would come out into Rat Hell and be 
too tired and dazed to find their way out and 
would have to be looked after in the dark and led 
back to the rooms above like little children. 

Rose, in spite of all that he had been through, 



THE ESCAPE FROM LIBBY PRISON 33 

was the strongest of the lot and could work 
after every other man had fallen out. It was 
still necessary for the tunnel to be carried five 
feet further to clear the wall. Once again a sick- 
ening series of accidents and surprises occurred. 
The day-shift always ran the risk of being 
missed at roll-call, which was held every morn- 
ing and afternoon. Usually this was got around 
by repeating — one man running from the end 
of the line behind the backs of his comrades 
and answering the name of the missing man. 
On one occasion, however, there were two miss- 
ing and a search was at once begun which might 
have resulted in finding the entrance to the 
tunnel. There was just time to pull these two up 
out of the dark and brush off the telltale dirt from 
their hands and clothes and tell them to lie down 
and play sick. Neither one of them needed to do 
much pretending and they both showed such signs 
of breakdown that the prison inspector came near 
sending them to the hospital, which would also 
have delayed operations. The next day, while 
one man was inside the tunnel, a party of guards 
entered Rat Hell and remained there so long that 
it was evident they must have suspected that some- 



34 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

thing was going on. Colonel Rose called his band 
together for a conference. He believed that two 
days of solid work would finish the tunnel. The 
rest of the men, however, pleaded for time. They 
were half sick, wholly exhausted and discouraged. 
Rose decided that he would risk no further delay 
and that the last two days' work should be en- 
trusted to no one except himself. The next day 
was Sunday and the cellar was usually not in- 
spected on that day. He posted his fanners and 
sentries and at early dawn crawled into the tunnel 
and worked all day long and far into the night 
lying full length in a stifling hole hardly two feet 
in diameter. When he dragged himself out that 
night, he could not stand but had to be carried 
across the cellar and up the rope ladder and fanned 
and sponged with cold water and fed what soup 
they could obtain until he was able to talk. He 
then told the band that he believed that twelve hours 
more of work would carry the tunnel beyond the 
danger line. He slept for a few hours and then, in 
spite of the protests of the others, crawled down 
into the reeking hole again, followed by the strong- 
est of the band who were to act as fanners. 

For seventeen days they had been working and 



THE ESCAPE FROM LIBBY PRISON 35 

the tunnel was now fifty-three feet long. In order 
to save time, Rose had made the last few feet so 
narrow that it was impossible for him to even turn 
over or shift his position. All day long he worked. 
Night came and he still toiled on, although his 
strokes were so feeble that he only advanced by 
inches each hour. Finally it was nearly midnight 
of the last day and Rose had reached the limit of 
his strength. The fanners were so exhausted that 
they could no longer push the air to the end of the 
tunnel. Rose felt himself dying of suffocation. 
He was too weak to crawl backward, nor had he 
strength to take another stroke. The air became 
fouler and thicker and he felt his senses leaving 
him and he gasped again and again in a struggle 
for one breath of pure air. In what he felt 
was his death agony, he finally forced himself over 
on his back and struck the earth above him with 
his fists as he unconsciously clutched at his throat 
in the throes of suffocation. Thrusting out his 
arms in one last convulsive struggle, he suddenly 
felt both fists go through the earth and a draught 
of pure, life-giving air came in. For a mo- 
ment Rose had the terrible feeling that it was too 
late and that he was too sick to rally. Once again, 



36 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

however, his indomitable courage drove back 
death. For some minutes he lay slowly breathing 
the air of out-of-doors. It was like the elixir of 
life to him after long months of breathing the foul 
atmosphere of the prison and tunnel. Little by little 
his strength came back and he slowly enlarged the 
hole and finally thrust his head and shoulders cau- 
tiously out into the yard. The first thing that 
caught his eye was a star and he felt as if he had 
broken out of the grave and come back again to 
hope and life. He found that he was still on the 
prison side of the wall, but directly in front of him 
was a gate which was fastened only by a swinging 
bar. Rose spent some moments practicing raising 
this bar until he felt sure he could do it quietly and 
swiftly. Just outside was the sentry beat. Rose 
waited until the sentry's back was turned, opened 
the gate and peered out, convincing himself that 
there was plenty of time to pass out of the gate 
and into the darkness beyond before the sentry 
turned to come back. He then lowered himself 
again into the stifling tunnel, drew a plank 
which he found in the yard over the opening, 
after first carefully concealing the fresh earth, and 
crept back again into Rat Hell. 



THE ESCAPE FROM LIBBY PRISON 37 

It was three o'clock in the morning when Rose 
gathered together his little band and told them 
that at last Libby Prison was open. Rose and 
Hamilton, the leaders, were anxious to start at 
once. They had seen so many accidents and so 
many strokes of misfortune that they urged an in- 
stant escape. The others, however, begged them 
to wait and to leave early the next evening so that 
they could gain a whole night's start before their 
absence was found at the morning roll-call. With 
many misgivings. Rose at last consented to do 
this. The next day was the most nerve-racking 
day of his life. Every noise or whisper of the 
guard seemed to him to be a sign that the tunnel 
had been discovered. The time finally dragged 
along and nothing happened and once again the 
party met in Rat Hell at seven o'clock in the 
evening of February 9th and Rose and the faith- 
ful Hamilton led the way through the tunnel to 
freedom. Every move was carefully planned. 
The plank was raised noiselessly and Rose had 
taken the precaution to leave the gate half-open so 
that the sentry on duty that night would see noth- 
ing unusual. He found it just as he had left it. 
All that was necessary now to do was for each 



38 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

man to wait until the sentry had passed a few yards 
beyond the gate and then to start noiselessly 
through and out to freedom. All thirteen escaped 
easily. The last man left a message that the 
prison was open to any one who dared try the 
tunnel. By nine o'clock that night the message 
flashed through each ward that the colonel and a 
party had escaped. There was a rush for the hole 
at the fireplace and one hundred and nine other 
prisoners slipped through and got safely past the 
guard. After days and weeks of hiding, starving 
and freezing, the original party and many of the 
others got safely through to the Union lines. 

Castle Despair had again been broken by Mr. 
Great Heart 



CHAPTER III 
Two Against a City 



CHAPTER III 

TWO AGAINST A CITY 

It takes brave men to fight battles. It takes 
braver men to face death without fighting. 

In the spring of 1862 New Orleans, the Queen 
City of the South, was blockaded by the Union 
fleet. No one could come in or go out. The 
grass grew in her empty streets. The wharves 
were deserted and cobwebs lay on the shut 
and barred warehouses. The river itself, which 
had been thronged with the masts and funnels 
of a thousand crowded craft, flowed yellow and 
empty as the Amazon. 

As business stopped and wages grew scarce 
and scarcer, the fierce, dangerous part of the 
population which comes to the surface in times of 
siege began to gain more and more control of 
the city. For years there had been a secret 
society of criminals in New Orleans which had 
often controlled her city government. It was 
known as the "Thugs." Heretofore they had 



42 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

always worked in secret and underground. Now 
criminals who formerly would only come out at 
night and secretly, were seen on the streets in 
open day. As the Union lines closed around the 
city by sea and land, the crowds of men and 
women without money and without work be- 
came as fierce and bitter and dangerous as rats 
in a trap. For a while they told each other that 
the city could never be taken. Nothing afloat, 
they said again and again, can pass by the great 
chain and the sunken ships that block the river. 
If they could they would sink under the withering 
fire of Fort Jackson, a great star-shaped fort of 
stone and mortar, or Fort St. Phillip with its fifty- 
two guns which could be brought to bear on any 
vessel going up or down the river. Beyond the 
forts was a fleet of rams and gunboats and in a 
shipyard over at Jefferson, one of the suburbs of 
New Orleans, was building the great iron-clad 
Mississippi, which alone they felt would be equal 
to the whole blockading fleet. So thought and 
said the swarming unemployed thousands of 
New Orleans. Finally came a dreadful day when 
the tops of the naked masts of the hated Yankee 
fleet showed against the evening sky across one 



TWO AGAINST A CITY 43 

of the bends of the river. Then came the roar of 
distant guns for a day and a night as the Union 
vessels attaclced the forts and concealed batteries. 
Still the people believed in their defenses although 
the firing came nearer and nearer. Not until they 
saw the city troops carry the cotton out of the 
cotton-presses down to the wharves to be burned 
in miles of twisting flame to save it from the 
Union Army did they realize how close was the 
day of the surrender of the city. Then all the 
empty ships which had been moored out in the 
river were fired and the warehouses of provisions 
still left were broken open. Mobs of desperate 
men and women surged back and forth fighting 
for the sugar and rice and molasses with which 
the wharves were covered. Suddenly around 
Slaughter House Point, silent, grim and terrible, 
came the black fleet which had safely run the 
gauntlet of forts, gunboats, batteries and torpe- 
does. For the first time since the war had 
begun, the Stars and Stripes floated again in 
sight of New Orleans. As the fleet came nearer 
and nearer, the crowds which blackened the 
wharves and levees of New Orleans shouted for 
the Mississippi. 



44 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

"Where is the Mississippi? Ram the Yanks 1 
Mississippi ! Mississippi ! Mississippi ! " thou- 
sands of voices roared across the water and 
through the forsaken streets of the doomed city. 
And then, as if called by the shout of her city, 
around a bend suddenly floated the great iron-clad 
Mississippi which was to save New Orleans, — a 
helpless, drifting mass of flames. There was a 
moment of utter silence and then a scream of 
rage and despair went up that drowned the crack- 
ling of the flames. 

" Betrayed ! Betrayed ! We have been be- 
trayed ! " was the cry which went up everywhere. 
No stranger's life was worth a moment's purchase. 
One man whose only crime was that he was un- 
known to the mob was seized at one of the wharves 
and in an instant was swinging, twisting and 
choking, from the end of a rope at a lamp-post. 
Through the crowds flitted the Thugs and began 
a reign of terror against all whom they hated or 
feared. Men were hung and shot and stabbed to 
death that day at a word. The mob was as dan- 
gerous, desperate and as unreasoning as a mad 
dog. Through this roaring, frothing, cursing 
crowd it was necessary for Admiral Farragut to 



TWO AGAINST A CITY 45 

send messengers to the mayor at the City Hall to 
demand the surrender of the city. It seemed to 
the men in the ships like going into a den of 
trapped wild beasts, yet instantly Captain The- 
odoras Bailey, the second in command, demanded 
from the admiral the right to undertake this dan- 
gerous mission. With a little guard of twenty 
men he was landed on the levee in front of a 
howling mob which crowded the river-front as far 
as the eye could reach. They offered an impene- 
trable line through which no man could pass. 
Captain Bailey drew his marines up in line and 
tried to reason with the mob, but could not even 
be heard. He then ordered his men to level their 
muskets and take aim. In an instant the mob 
had pushed forward to the front crowds of women 
and children and dared the Yanks to shoot. Cap- 
tain Bailey realized that nothing could be done by 
force without a useless slaughter of men and 
women and children. In order to save this he 
decided to try what could be done by two un- 
armed men. If this plan failed, it would be time 
enough to try what could be done by grape and 
canister. Taking a flag of truce and choosing as 
his companion a young midshipman named Read, 



46 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

whom he knew to be a man of singular coolness, 
Captain Bailey started up the street to the City 
Hall. It was a desperate chance. The mob had 
already tasted blood and it was almost certain 
that some one would shoot or stab these two rep- 
resentatives of the hated Yanks as soon as they 
were out of sight of the ships. The slightest sign 
of fear or hesitation would mean the death of both 
of them. Captain Bailey and Midshipman Read, 
however, were men who would take just such a 
chance. Slowly, unconcernedly, they walked along 
the streets through a roar of shouts, and curses, 
and cheers for Jeff Davis. As they reached the 
middle of the city, the crowd became more and 
more threatening. They were pushed and jostled 
while men, many of them members of the dreaded 
Thugs, thrust cocked revolvers into their faces and 
waved bowie-knives close to their throats. Others 
rushed up with coils of rope which had already 
done dreadful service. Captain Bailey never even 
glanced at the men around him, but looking 
straight ahead walked on as unconcernedly as if 
he were treading his own quarter-deck. Young 
Read acted as if he were bored with the whole 
proceeding. He examined carefully the brand- 




Captain Bailey and Midshipman Read Facing the New Orleans Mob 



TWO AGAINST A CITY 47 

ished revolvers and knives and smiled pleasantly 
into the distorted, scowling, gnashing faces which 
were thrust up against his. Occasionally he 
would half pause to examine some building 
which seemed to impress him as particularly in- 
teresting and would then saunter unconcernedly 
along after his captain. 

Right on through the gauntlet of death passed 
the two men with never a quiver of the eye or a 
motion of the face to show that they even knew 
the mob was there. Little by little, men who had 
retained something of their self-control began to 
persuade the more lawless part of the rabble to 
fall back. It was whispered around that Farra- 
gut, that old man of iron and fire, had said that 
he would level the city as flat as the river if a hand 
were even laid on his envoys. Finally through 
the surging streets appeared the City Hall and 
the end of that desperate march was in sight. At 
the very steps of the City Hall the mob took a 
last stand. Half-a-dozen howling young rufifians, 
with cocked revolvers in either hand, stood on 
the lower step and dared the Union messen- 
gers to go an inch farther. Midshipman Read 
stepped smilingly ahead of his captain and gently 



48 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

pushed with either hand two of the cursing young 
desperadoes far enough to one side to allow for a 
passageway between them. Both of them actu- 
ally placed the muzzles of their cocked revolvers 
against his neck as a last threat, but even the 
touch of cold steel did not drive away Read's 
amused smile. The mob gave up. Evidently 
these men had resources about which they knew 
nothing. 

"They were so sure that we wouldn't kill them 
that we couldn't," said one of the Thugs after- 
ward in explaining why the hated messengers 
had been allowed to march up the steps. 

They sauntered into the mayer's room where 
they met a group of white-faced, trembling men 
who were the mayor and his council. Captain 
Bailey delivered the admiral's summons for the 
surrender of the city to the mayor. The mob, 
which at first had stayed back, at this point 
surged up to the windows and shouted curses 
and threats into the very mayor's room, threat- 
ening him and the council if they dared to sur- 
render the city. Captain Bailey and his com- 
panion gave the trembling city officials a few 
minutes in which to make up their minds. Sud- 



TWO AGAINST A CITY 49 

denly there was heard a roar outside louder than 
any which had come before. The mob had torn 
down the Union flag which had been hoisted 
over the custom house and rushing to the 
mayor's office, tore it to pieces outside the open 
windows and threw the fragments in at the seated 
envoys. This insult to their flag aroused Captain 
Bailey and young Read as no threats against 
them personally had been able to do. Turning 
to the mayor and the shrinking council, Bailey 
said, " As there is a God in heaven, the man 
who tore down that Union flag shall hang for it." 
Later on this promise was carried out by the in- 
flexible General Butler when he took over the 
city from Admiral Farragut and hanged Mum- 
ford, the man who tore down the flag in the city 
square, before the very mob which had so vio- 
lently applauded his action. This incident was 
the last straw for the mayor and his associates. 
They neither dared to refuse to surrender the city 
lest it should be bombarded by Farragut nor did 
they dare to surrender it for fear of the mob 
which had gathered around them with signifi- 
cant coils of rope over their arms. In a half- 
whisper they hurriedly notified Captain Bailey 



50 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

that they could not surrender the city, but that 
they would make no resistance if the Union forces 
occupied it. Looking at them contemptuously, 
Captain Bailey turned away, picked up the frag- 
ments of the torn flag and faced the mob outside 
threateningly. The man who had torn the flag 
slunk back and his example was contagious. 
One by one men commenced to sneak away and 
in a minute the City Hall was deserted and Cap- 
tain Bailey and Midshipman Read were able to 
leave the building and drive back to the vessels 
in a carriage obtained for them by the mayor's 
secretary. 

So ended what one of the mob, who afterward 
became a valued citizen of his state, described as 
the bravest deed he had ever seen — two unarmed 
men facing and defeating a mob of murderers 
and madmen. 



CHAPTER IV 
Boy Heroes 



CHAPTER IV 

BOY HEROES 

One doesn't have to be big, or old, or strong 
to be brave. But one does have to believe in 
something so much and so hard that nothing else 
counts, even death. An idea that is so big that 
everything else seems small is called an ideal. 
It is easy for a boy with an ideal to be brave. 
Cassabianca, the boy who stayed on the burning 
ship because he had been ordered to wait there 
by his dead father, had made obedience his ideal. 
The boy of Holland who found a leak in the dyke 
which could only be stopped by his hand, and 
who stayed through the long night and saved his 
village but lost his right hand had learned this 
great ideal of self-sacrifice. The shepherd boy 
who saved his sheep from a lion and a bear and 
who afterward was the only one who dared enter 
the fatal valley and meet the fierce giant-warrior 
had as his ideal faith. He believed so strongly 
that he was doing God's will that he shared God's 
strength. 



54 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

In the great war between slavery and freedom 
which swept like fire over the country, boys 
learned the ideals for which their fathers fought. 
They learned to believe so entirely in freedom that 
there was no room left for fear. Many of them 
went to the war as drummer boys, the only way 
in which boys could enlist. One of these was 
Johnny McLaughlin of the Tenth Indiana. Johnny 
lived at a place called Lafayette and was not quite 
eleven years old. From the minute that the war 
broke out he thought of nothing but what he 
could do for his country and for freedom. Other 
boys played at drilling and marching, but this 
was not enough for him. He made inquiries and 
found that if he could learn to drum, there was a 
chance that he might be allowed to enlist. He 
said nothing at first to his father and mother about 
his plans, but saved all his spending-money and 
worked every holiday in order to get enough to 
buy a drum. Times were hard, however. There 
was little money for men, much less for boys, and 
after Johnny had worked for over two months, he 
had saved exactly two dollars. In the village was 
a drummer who had been sent home to recover 
from his wounds and to him Johnny went one day 



BOY HEROES 55 

to ask how much more he would have to save 
before he could buy a drum. The man told him 
that a good drum would cost him at least ten 
dollars. Johnny sighed and turned away very 
much discouraged. 

" Why don't you play something else ? " said the 
man. "You can get more fun out of ten dollars 
than buying a drum with it." 

" I don't want it to play with," said Johnny. *• I 
want to learn to drum so that 1 can enlist." 

At first the man laughed at the boy — he seemed so 
litde, but when he found that Johnny had made up 
his mind to do his share for his country in the great 
fight, Donaldson, as he was named, became serious. 

" I tell you what I'll do," he said at last. " If 
you are really in earnest about learning to drum, 
I'll give you lessons myself, for," said he modestly, 
" I was the best drummer in my regiment. If you 
can learn and they will take you, I'll give you the 
old drum. I'll send it to the front even if I can't 
go myself." 

This was enough for Johnny. Morning, noon 
and night he was with his friend Donaldson and 
it was a wonder that the drum-head was not worn 
out long before he learned. Learn he did, how- 



56 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

ever, and in a few months there was not a roll or 
a call which he could not play. One morning as 
the school-bell was ringing, Johnny presented 
himself to his parents with the big drum around 
his neck looking nearly as large as he was. 

" I'm going to enlist," he said simply. 

At first his father and mother, like Donaldson, 
were inclined to laugh at him, he was such a little 
boy, but Johnny was in earnest and a boy who is 
in earnest always gets what he wants. A few 
days later found him a drummer for the Tenth 
Indiana and as he led the regiment, beating the 
long roll, Johnny was the proudest boy that had 
ever come out of Indiana. He had his first taste 
of fire at Fort Donelson and afterward at the 
bloody battle of Shiloh. Johnny drummed until 
the terrible drumming of the muskets drowned 
out even his loud notes. Then he laid down his 
sticks, carefully hid his drum, took a musket and 
cartridge box from ofif one of the dead soldiers 
and ran on with his regiment and fought in the 
front with the bravest of them all. He had a 
quick eye and it was not long before he could 
shoot as accurately as any man there. 

It was just after Shiloh that Johnny had a nar- 



BOY HEROES 57 



row escape from being captured. Wanting to try 
everything, he obtained permission to do picket 
duty at night although this work was not required 
of drummer boys. As he had shown himself such 
a cool and ready fighter, his colonel felt that he 
was entirely able to do this duty and one dark 
night put him on picket. His post was some dis- 
tance away from the camp. Just at dawn he was 
suddenly rushed by a party of rebel cavalry. As 
they burst out of the bushes Johnny fired his 
carbine at the first one, dropping him, and ran 
across an open field about fifty yards wide. At 
the other side was an old, rotten, log fence and 
beyond that a mass of briers and underbrush 
where he was sure the horses could not follow. 
Fortunately for him the rains had made the field a 
mass of mud. There his lightness give him the 
advantage, for the horses slumped through at 
every step. The rebels fired constantly at him as 
they rode with their pistols. One ball went 
through his hat, another clear through his car- 
tridge box and lodged in his coat, fortunately 
without exploding any of the cartridges. Beyond 
the middle of the field the ground was drier and 
the horsemen commenced to gain on him, but he 



58 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

reached the fence well ahead and with one jump 
landed on the top. The rotten rails gave way 
underneath him and he plunged headlong over 
into the brush, right on the back of a big sleeping 
wild pig who had rooted out a lair at this place. 
The pig jumped up grunting and crashed through 
the underbrush and Johnny heard his pursuers 
smashing through the broken fence not a rod 
away. He curled up into the round hole which 
the pig had left, drew down the bushes over his 
head and lay perfectly quiet. The horsemen, 
hearing the rustling of leaves and the smashing of 
branches as the pig dashed of! down a pathway, 
followed after at full gallop and were out of sight 
in a minute. As soon as the sound of their gal- 
loping had died away, Johnny crawled cautiously 
out of his hole and made the best of his way back 
to camp. The next day some of the rebel cavalry 
were taken prisoners and Johnny recognized one 
of them as the leader of the squad which had so 
nearly caught him. The prisoner recognized the 
boy at the same time and they both grinned cheer- 
fully at each other. 

" Did you catch that pig yesterday ? " finally said 
Johnny. 



BOY HEROES 59 

" We did that," retorted the prisoner, " but it 
wasn't the one we were after." 

Johnny had always been able to ride the most 
spirited horses on the farm and after Shiloh he 
asked to be transferred from the infantry to Colo- 
nel Jacob's Kentucky Cavalry. There he attracted 
the attention of the colonel so that the latter gave 
him one of the best horses in the regiment and a 
place in the Fighting First, as the best-mounted 
company was called, which the colonel always 
led personally in every charge. In this company 
Johnny was taught how to handle a sabre. The 
regular sabre was too heavy for him, but Colonel 
Jacob had one light, short one specially made 
which Johnny learned to handle like a flash. A 
German sergeant, who had been a great fencer on 
the Continent, taught him all that he knew and 
before long Johnny was an expert in tricks of fence 
which stood him in good stead later on. One 
in special he so perfected that it was never parried. 
Instead of striking down with the sabre as is gen- 
erally done, Johnny learned a whirling, flashing 
upper-cut which came so rapidly that generally an 
opponent could not even see much less parry it. 
He was also armed with the regulation revolver 



6o BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

and a light carbine instead of the heavy revolving 
rifle used by the rest of the troop. At Perryville 
he fought his first battle with his new regiment. 
In the charge he stuck close to Colonel Jacob and 
received a ball through his left leg above the knee. 
Fortunately it did not break any bone and Johnny 
tore a strip off his shirt, bandaged the hole and 
went on with the fight. While he was doing this, 
the greater part of the regiment passed on and 
when Johnny started to join his colonel, he could 
not find him. He rode like the wind over the field 
and soon behind a little patch of woods saw Colo- 
nel Jacobs with only six or seven men, the rest 
having been scattered in the fight. Johnny 
spurred his horse over to him and the colonel was 
delighted to be joined by his little body-guard. 
As they were riding along to rejoin the rest of the 
regiment, from out a clump of bushes a squad of 
fifty men led by a Confederate major dashed out 
calling on them to surrender. Colonel Jacob hes- 
itated, for some of his men were wounded and the 
odds seemed too great for a fight. Before he had 
time to answer, Johnny slipped in front of him, 
drew out his revolver and fired directly into the 
Confederate officer's face, killing him instantly and 



BOY HEROES 6i 



then drawing his sabre dashed into the ranks of 
the enemy. The first man he met was a big fellow 
whose bare, brawny arm and blood-stained sabre 
proved him a master with his weapon. Johnny 
never gave him a chance to strike. At the whirl 
of his light sabre his opponent instinctively raised 
his weapon in the ordinary parry of a down-blow 
and the point of Johnny's sabre caught him under 
the chin and toppled him off his horse. The 
Union men gave a cheer, followed their little 
leader, breaking clear through the demoralized 
Confederates and joined their command at the 
other side of the field. 

A few weeks later they had a skirmish with the 
troop of John Morgan, the most dreaded cavalry 
leader and fighter in all the South. Johnny, as 
usual, was in the front of the charge and had just 
cut at one man when another aimed a tremendous 
blow at his head in passing. There was just time 
for Johnny to raise the pommel of his sabre to save 
his head, but the deflected blow caught him on the 
leg and he fell from the horse with blood spurting 
out of his other leg this time. He lay perfectly 
quiet, but another rebel had seen him fall and 
spurring forward, caught him by the collar, saying : 



62 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

"We'll keep this little Yankee in a cage to 
show the children." 

Johnny did not approve of this cage-idea and 
although there was no room to use the sabre, 
managed to work his left hand back into his belt, 
draw his revolver and shoot his captor dead. In 
another minute his company came riding back 
and he was whirled up behind his colonel and 
rode back of him to safety. This last wound 
proved to be a serious one and he was sent back to 
Indiana on a furlough to give it time to heal. On 
the way back he was stopped by a provost guard 
and asked for his pass. 

" My colonel forgot to give me any passes," 
said Johnny, " but here are two that the rebels 
gave me," showing his bandaged legs, and the 
guard agreed with him that this was pass enough 
for any one. As his wound refused to heal, against 
his wishes he was discharged and once more re- 
turned home. He then tried to enlist again, but 
each time he was turned down because of the un- 
healed wound. Finally, Johnny traveled clear to 
Washington and had a personal talk with Presi- 
dent Lincoln and explained to him that his wound 
would never heal except in active service. His 



BOY HEROES 63 

arguments had such force with the President that 
a special order was made for his enlistment and 
he fought through the whole war and afterward 
joined the regular army. 

The littlest hero of the war was Eddie Lee. 
Shortly before the battle of Wilson's Creek, one 
of the Iowa regiments was ordered to join General 
Lyon in his march to the creek. The drummer 
of one of the companies was taken sick and 
had to go to the hospital. The day before the 
regiment was to march a negro came to the camp 
and told the captain that he knew of a drummer 
who would like to enlist. The captain told him 
to bring the boy in the next morning and if he 
could drum well he would give him a chance. 
The next day during the beating of the reveille, 
a woman in deep mourning came in leading by 
the hand a little chap about as big as a penny 
and apparently not more than five or six years 
old. She inquired for the captain and when the 
latter came out, told him that she had brought 
him a drummer boy. 

" Drummer boy," said the captain ; " why, 
madam, we don't take them as small as this. 



64 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

That boy hasn't been out of the cradle many 
months." 

" He has been out long enough," spoke up the 
boy, " to play any tune you want." 

His mother then told the captain that she was 
from East Tennessee where her husband had been 
killed by the rebels and all her property destroyed 
and she must find a place for the boy. 

"Well, well," said the captain, impatiently, 
" Sergeant, bring the drum and order our fifer to 
come forward." 

In a few moments the drum was produced and 
the fifer, a tall, good-natured fellow over six feet 
in height, made his appearance. 

" Here's your new side-partner. Bill," said the 
captain. 

Bill stooped down, and down and down until 
his hands rested on his ankles and peered into the 
boy's face carefully. 

" Why, captain," said he, " he ain't much taller 
than the drum. 

" Little man, can you really drum?" he asked. 

" Yes, sir," said the boy. " I used to drum foi 
Captain Hill in Tennessee. I am nearly ten years 
old and I want the place." 



BOY HEROES 65 

The fifer straightened himself up slowly, placed 
his fife at his mouth and commenced to play 
" The Flowers of the Forest," one of the most 
difficult pieces to follow on the drum. The little 
chap accompanied him without a mistake and 
when he had finished began a perfect fusillade of 
rolls and calls and rallies which came so fast that 
they sounded like a volley of musketry. When 
the noise had finally died out, the captain turned 
to his mother and said : 

"Madam, I'll take that boy. He isn't much 
bigger than a minute but he certainly can drum." 

The woman kissed the boy and nearly broke 
down. 

" You'll surely bring him back to me, captain," 
she said. 

"Sure," said the captain ; " we'll all be discharged 
in about six weeks." 

An hour later Eddie was marching at the head 
of the Iowa First playing " The Girl I Left Behind 
Me " as it had never been played before. He and 
Bill, the fifer, became great chums and Eddie was 
the favorite of the whole regiment. Whenever 
anything especially nice was brought back by the 
foraging parties, Eddie always had his share and 



66 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

the captain said tliat he was in far more danger 
from watermelons than he was from bullets. On 
heavy marches the fifer would carry him on his 
back, drum and all, and this was always Eddie's 
position in fording the numerous streams. 

At the Battle of Wilson's Creek the Iowa regi- 
ment and a part of an Illinois regiment were 
ordered to clear out a flanking party concealed in 
a ravine upon the left of the Union forces. The 
ravine was a deep, long one with high trees and 
heavy underbrush and dark even at noontime. 
The Union regiments marched down and there 
was a dreadful hand-to-hand fight in the brush in 
the semi-twilight. Men became separated from 
each other and as in the great battle between 
David and Absalom, the wood devoured more 
people that day than the sword devoured. The 
fight was going against the Union men when sud- 
denly a Union battery wheeled into line on a 
near-by hill and poured a rain of grape and canis- 
ter into the Confederates which drove them out in 
short order. Later on the word was passed 
through the Union Army that General Lyon had 
been killed and soon after came the order to fall 
back upon Springfield. The Iowa regiment and 



BOY HEROES 67 

two companies of a Missouri regiment were or- 
dered to camp on the battle-field and act as a rear 
guard to cover a retreat. When the men came 
together that night there was no drummer boy. 
In the hurry and rush of hand-to-hand fight- 
ing, Eddie had become separated from Bill and 
although the latter raged back and forth through 
the brush like an angry bull, never a trace of his 
little comrade could he find. That night the sen- 
tries stood guard over the abandoned field and 
along the edge of the dark ravine now filled with 
the dead of both sides. It was a wild, desolate 
country and as the men passed back and forth 
over the stricken field, they could hear the long, 
mournful, wailing howl of the wolves which were 
brought by the smell of blood from the wilder- 
ness to the battle-field from miles around. That 
night poor Bill was unable to sleep and moaned 
and tossed on his blanket and said for the thou- 
sandth time : 

" If only I had kept closer to the little chap." 

Suddenly he sprang to his feet and roused the 
sleeping men all around him. 

" Don't you hear a drum? " said he. 

They all listened sadly, but could hear nothing 



68 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

" Lie down, Bill," said one of them. " Eddie's 
gone. We all did the best we could." 

" He's down there in the dark," cried poor Bill, 
" drumming for help, and I must go to him." 

The others tried to hold him back for it was 
impossible to see a foot through the tangled ravine 
at night and moreover the orders were strict 
against any one leaving camp. Bill went to the 
sentry who guarded the captain's tent and finally 
persuaded the man to wake up the captain. The 
latter lay exhausted with fatigue and sorrow, 
but came out and listened as did all the rest for 
the drum, but nothing could be heard. 

" You imagined it, my poor fellow," he said. 
" There's nothing you could do to-night anyway. 
Wait until morning." 

Bill paced restlessly up and down all through 
that dark night and just as the dawn-light came in 
the sky, he heard again faint and far away a drum 
beating the morning call from out of the silence of 
the deep ravine. Again he went to the captain. 

" Of course you can go," said the latter, kindly, 
" but you must be back as soon as possible for we 
march at daybreak. Look out for yourself as the 
place is full of bushwhackers and rebel scouts." 



BOY HEROES 69 



Bill started down the hill through the thick under- 
brush and wandered around for a time trying to 
locate the drum-beats which were thrown back by 
the trees so that it was difficult to determine from 
what point they came. As he crept along through 
the underbrush, they sounded louder and louder 
and finally in the darkest, deepest part of the 
ravine, he came out from behind a great pin-oak 
and saw his little comrade sitting on the ground 
leaning against the trunk of a fallen tree and beating 
his drum which was hung on a bush in front of him. 

" Eddie, Eddie, dear old Eddie," shouted Bill, 
bursting through the thicket. At the sound the 
little chap dropped his drumsticks and exclaimed : 

" Oh, Bill, I am so glad to see you. I knew 
you would come. Do get me a drink." 

Bill started to take his canteen down to a little 
near-by brook when Eddie called him back. 

"You'll come back. Bill, won't you," he said, 
" for I can't walk." 

Bill looked down and saw that both of his feet 
had been shot away by a cannon-ball and that the 
little fellow was sitting in a pool of his own blood. 
Choking back his sobs, the big fifer crawled down 
to the brook and soon came back with his canteen 



70 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

full of cold water which Eddie emptied again and 
again. 

" You don't think I am going to die, do you, 
Bill? " said the little boy at last. " I do so want to 
finish out my time and go back to mother. This 
man said I would not and that the surgeon would 
be able to cure me." 

For the first time Bill noticed that just at 
Eddie's feet lay a dead Confederate. He had 
been shot through the stomach and had fallen 
near where Eddie lay. Realizing that he could 
not live and seeing the condition of the boy, he 
had crawled up to him and taking off his buck- 
skin suspenders had bandaged with them the little 
fellow's legs so that he would not bleed to death 
and on tying the last knot had fallen back dead 
himself. Eddie had just finished telling Bill all 
about it in a whisper, for his strength was going 
fast, when there was a trampling of horses through 
the ravine and in a minute a Confederate scouting 
party broke through the brush, calling upon Bill 
to surrender. 

" I'll do anything you want," said Bill, *' if you 
will only take my little pal here safe back to 
camp and get him into the hands of a surgeon." 



BOY HEROES 71 



The Confederate captain stooped down and 
spoke gendy to the boy and in a minute took him 
up and mounted him in front of him on his own 
horse and they rode carefully back to the Con- 
federate camp, but when they reached the tents of 
the nearest Confederate company they found that 
little Eddie had served out his time and had given 
his life for his country. 

On June 30, 1862, was fought the stubborn 
battle of Glendale, one of the Seven Days' Batdes 
between McClellan, the general of the Union 
forces, and Lee, the Confederate commander. 
This battle was part of McClellan's campaign 
against Richmond, the capital of the Confeder- 
acy which he had within his grasp when he 
was out-generaled by Lee, who that month for 
the first time had been placed in supreme com- 
mand of the Confederate Army. With him were 
his two great generals, Stonewall Jackson and 
Longstreet. McClellan was within sight of the 
promised land. The spires of Richmond showed 
against the sky. Instead of fighting he hesitated 
and procrastinated away every chance of victory. 
Lee was even then planning that wonderful 



72 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

strategy which was to halt a victorious army, turn 
it away from the beleaguered capital of the Con- 
federacy and send it stumbling back North in a 
series of defeats. It was necessary for him to 
have a conference with Stonewall Jackson, his 
great fighting right-hand in military matters. 
Jackson rode almost alone fifty miles and attended 
a conference with Lee, Longstreet and Generals 
D. H. and A. P. Hill. To each of them General 
Lee assigned the part that he was to play. In 
the meantime, knowing that McCIellan always 
read and pondered the Richmond papers, he 
arranged that simultaneously every paper should 
publish as news the pretended facts that strong 
reinforcements had been sent to the Shenandoah 
Valley. McCIellan fell into the trap and instead 
of pressing forward to attack Richmond, which 
was now only guarded by a small force, he, as 
usual, waited for reinforcements and allowed his 
antagonists to march around him and start flank- 
ing battles which threatened to cut off his line of 
communications. The battle of Gaines Mill was 
fought in which battle General Fitz John Porter 
with thirty-one thousand men stubbornly faced 
Lee and Jackson's forces of fifty-five thousand 



BOY HEROES 73 



and with sullen obstinacy only retreated when it 
was absolutely impossible longer to hold his 
ground. This defeat, which occurred simply be- 
cause McClellan could not bring himself to send 
Porter the necessary reinforcements, made Gen- 
eral McClellan resolve to withdraw, although 
even then, with a superior army, he could have 
fought his way to Richmond. From June 25th to 
July I, 1862, occurred the Seven Days' Battles 
fought by the retreating Union Army. By one of 
the few mistakes which General Lee made in that 
campaign, the Union Army was allowed a respite 
of twenty-four hours to organize its retreat and 
were well on their way before pursuit was given. 
On June 29th there was a battle between the rear 
guard of the Union force and the Confederate's 
under General Magruder in which the Confed- 
erates were defeated. The next day came the 
battle of Glendale. Generals Longstreet and A. P. 
Hill commanded the Confederate Army while the 
rear guard of the retreating Union forces was 
made up of General McCall's division and that of 
General Heintzelman and a part of the corps 
under General Sumner which had done such 
gallant fighting the day before. It was a stern 



74 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

and stubborn battle. If the Confederates could 
cut through the rear guard, they would have the 
retreating army at their mercy. On the other 
hand, if they could be held back, the main army 
would have time to occupy a favorable position 
and entrench and could be saved. For a time it 
seemed as if the Confederate attack could not 
be checked. Every available man was called into 
action. Back at the rear were posted the hospital 
corps where the sick and wounded lay. With 
them were stationed the band and the drum-corps 
made up of drummer boys who were supposed 
to keep out of actual fighting as much as possible. 
Among them was a little Jewish boy named 
Benjamin Levy, who was only sixteen years old 
and small for his age. Benjamin stayed back 
with the hospital while the roar of the battle grew 
louder and louder. Finally there was a tremen- 
dous chorus of yells and groans and shouts 
mingled with the rattle of rifle-shots and the 
heavy thudding sounds which sabres and bayo- 
nets make as they slash and pierce living flesh. 
Little groups of wounded men came straggling 
back or were carried back to the hospital and 
each one told a fresh story of the fierce fight 



BOY HEROES 75 

which was going on at the near-by front. Ben- 
jamin could stand it no longer. The last wounded 
man that came in hobbled along with a broken 
leg, using his rifle for a crutch. The boy helped 
him to a near-by cot and made him as comfortable 
as he could. 

" Now you lie quiet," he said, " until the doctor 
comes and I'll just borrow this rifle of yours and 
do a little fighting in your place," and Benjamin 
picked up the gun and slipped on the other's 
cartridge belt. 

" Hi there, you come back with my gun," yelled 
the wounded man after him. "That front's no 
place for kids like you." 

Benjamin, however, was well on his way before 
the man had finished speaking and slipping past 
an indignant doctor who was trying to stop him, 
he ran forward, keeping as much as possible in 
the shelter of the trees among which the bullets 
and grape-shot were whining and humming. He 
passed many wounded limping to the rear and 
rows of prostrate men, some still, some writhing 
in the agony of their wounds. These were the 
men who had fallen on their way back to the 
hospital. A minute later Benjamin found himself 



76 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

in the thick of the fight. There had been a Con- 
federate charge which the Union soldiers had just 
barely been able to drive back. The men were 
still panting and shouting and firing volleys at the 
gray forces who were reluctantly withdrawing to 
rally for another attack. The boy lay down with 
the rest and loaded and fired his borrowed rifle as 
rapidly as he could. No one seemed to notice 
him except the color-bearer who happened to be 
the man next to him. He had stopped firing to 
wipe his face and saw the little fellow close by his 
arm. 

" Why don't you get back to the rear where 
you belong? " he said, pretending to talk very 
fiercely. " This is no place for little boys. When 
those gray-backs come back, you'll scamper quick 
enough, so you had better be on your way now." 

" No I won't," said Benjamin positively. '* I 
guess boys have got as much right to fight in this 
war as men have. Anyway, you won't see me do 
much running." 

Benjamin was mistaken in that last statement, 
for a minute later the colonel of this particular 
regiment decided that instead of waiting for a 
Confederate attack, he would do a little charging 



BOY HEROES 77 

on his own account. The signal came. The men 
sprang over the earthworks and Benjamin found 
himself running neck and neck with the color- 
bearer at the head of them all. It was a glorious 
charge. The ground ahead was smooth, the 
fierce flag of the regiment streamed just in front 
and all around were men panting and cheering as 
they ran. It was almost like a race on the old 
school-green at home. They came nearer and 
nearer to the masses of gray-clothed men who 
were hurriedly arranging themselves in regular 
ranks out of the hurry and confusion of their 
retreat. When they were only a short hundred 
yards distant, suddenly a wavering line of fire and 
smoke ran all up and down the straggling line 
in front of them. Men plunged headlong here 
and there and Benjamin noticed that he and 
the color-bearer seemed to have drawn away 
from the rest and were racing almost alone. Sud- 
denly his friend with the colors stopped in full 
stride, swung the flag over his head once with a 
shout and dropped backward with a bullet through 
his heart. As he fell the colors slowly dropped 
down through the air and were about to settle on 
the blood-stained grass when the boy, hardly 



78 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

knowing what he did, shifted his rifle to his left 
hand, caught the staff of the flag and once more 
the colors of the regiment were leading the men 
on. Right up to the gray line he carried them, 
followed by the whole regiment. Firing, cutting 
and stabbing with their bayonets they broke 
straight through the Confederates and after a 
hand-to-hand fight, drove them out of their posi- 
tion. They carried the boy, still clinging to the 
colors, on their shoulders to their colonel and to 
the end of his life Benjamin remembered the 
moment when the colonel shook hands with him 
before the cheering regiment as the climax of the 
greatest day of his life. 



CHAPTER V 
The Charge of Zagonyi 



CHAPTER V 
THE CHARGE OF ZAGONYI 

In battle the charge is the climax. In other 
kinds of fighting men have a certain amount of 
shelter and respite and at long range it makes 
little difference whether the fighter is strong or 
weak. In a charge, however, the fighting is hand 
to hand. As in the days of old, men fight at close 
grips with their enemy and each one must depend 
upon his own strength and skill and bravery. 

There have been three charges in modern 
battles which have been celebrated over and over 
again. The first of these was the last desperate 
charge of the Old Guard at Waterloo. A thin 
red line of English held a hill which Napoleon, the 
greatest of modern generals, saw was the keystone 
of the battle. If that could be taken, the whole arch 
of the English and Belgium forces would crumble 
away into defeat. Again and again the French 
stormed at this hill and each time were driven back 



82 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

by the coolly-waiting deadly ranks of the English. 
Toward nightfall Napoleon made one last des- 
perate effort. The Old Guard was to him what 
the great Tenth Legion had been to Julius Caesar, 
the best and bravest veterans of his army who 
boasted that they had never yet been defeated. 
Calling them up with every last one of his re- 
serves, he ordered a final desperate charge to 
break the battle center. To the grim drumming 
of what guns the little general had left, they 
rushed again up that blood-stained slope in des- 
perate dark masses of unbeaten men. With a 
storm of cheers, the columns surged up in a vast 
blue battle-wave which seemed as if it must dash 
ofi by its weight the little group of silent, grim 
defenders. The Englishmen waited and waited 
and waited until the rushing ranks were almost 
on them. Then they poured in a volley at such 
close range that every bullet did the work of two 
and with a deep English cheer sprang on the 
broken ranks with their favorite weapon, the 
bayonet. That great battle- wave broke in a 
foam of shattered, dying and defeated men and 
the sunset of that day was the sunset of Napo- 
leon's glory. 



THE CHARGE OF ZAGONYI 83 

Fifty years later in the great war which Eng- 
land with her allies was waging to keep the vast, 
fierce hordes of Russia from ruling Europe, hap- 
pened another glorious, useless charge. Owing 
to a misunderstanding of orders, a little squad of 
six hundred cavalrymen charged down a mile-long 
valley flanked on all sides by Russian artillery 
against a battery of guns whose fire faced them all 
the way. Every schoolboy who has ever spoken 
a piece on Friday afternoon knows what comes 
next. How the gallant Six Hundred, stormed at 
with shot and shell, made the charge to the won- 
der and admiration of three watching armies and 
how they forced their way into the jaws of death 
and into the mouth of hell and sabred the gunners 
and then rode back — all that was left of them. 

In our own Civil War occurred the most famous 
charge of modern days, Pickett's charge at the 
battle of Gettysburg. For three days raged the 
first battle which the Confederates had been able 
to fight on Northern soil. If their great General 
Lee, with his seventy thousand veterans, won this 
battle, Washington, Philadelphia and even New 
York were at his mercy. On the afternoon of the 
third day he made one last desperate effort to 



84 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

break the center of the Union forces. Pickett's 
division of the Virginia infantry was the center of 
the attacking forces and the column numbered 
altogether over fifteen thousand men. For two 
hours Lee cannonaded the Union center with one 
hundred and fifteen guns. He was answered by 
the Union artillery although they could only 
muster eighty guns. Finally the Union fire was 
stopped in order that the guns might cool for 
Hunt, the Union chief of artillery, realized that 
the cannonade was started to mask some last 
great attack. Suddenly three lines, each over a 
mile long, of Virginia, North Carolina, Alabama, 
Georgia and Tennessee regiments started to 
cover the mile and a half which separated them 
from the Union center. The Union crest was 
held by the Pennsylvania regiments who were 
posted back of the stone wall on the very summit. 
As the gray lines rushed over the distance with a 
score of fierce battle flags flaming and fluttering 
over their ranks, the eighty guns which had 
cooled so that they could now be used with good 
effect opened up on them first with solid shot and 
then with the tremendous explosive shells. As 
they charged, the Virginia regiments moved 



THE CHARGE OF ZAGONYI 85 

away to the left leaving a gap between them 
and the men from Alabama on the right. The 
Union leaders took advantage of this gap and 
forced in there the Vermont brigade and a half 
brigade of New York men. By suddenly chang- 
ing front these men were enabled to attack the 
charging thousands on their flank. The Union 
guns did terrible execution, opening up great 
gaps through the running, leaping, shouting 
men. As the charge came nearer and nearer the 
batteries changed to the more terrible grape and 
canister which cut the men down like grass before 
a reaper. Still they came on until they were face 
to face with the waiting Union soldiers who 
poured in a volley at short range. For a mo- 
ment the battle flags of the foremost Confederate 
regiments stood on the crest. The effort had 
been too much. Over half of the men had been 
killed or wounded and many others had turned 
to meet the flank attack of the Vermont and New 
York regiments so that when the Pennsylvania 
troops met them at last with the bayonet, the 
gray line wavered, broke, and the North was 
saved. 

All three of these great charges were brave, 



86 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

glorious failures. This is the story of a charge, an 
almost forgotten charge, just as brave, just as 
glorious, which succeeded, a charge in which one 
hundred and sixty men and boys broke and 
routed a force of over two thousand entrenched 
infantry and cavalry. 

At the breaking out of the war, one of the most 
popular of the Union commanders was John C. 
Fremont, the Pathfinder. He had opened up the 
far West and had made known to the people the 
true greatness of the country beyond the Missis- 
sippi. At the birth of the Republican or Free- 
Soil Party, he was the first candidate. The coun- 
try rang with a campaign song sung to the tune 
of the Marseillaise, the chorus of which was : 

«* March on, march on, ye braves, 
And let your war cry be, 
Free soil, free press, free votes, free men, 
Fremont and victory." 

He was one of the first generals appointed. 
Among those whom the fascination of his romantic 
and adventurous life had attracted to his side was 
a Hungarian refugee named Zagonyi. In his boy- 
hood he had fought in the desperate but unsuc- 
cessful war which Hungary made to free herself 



THE CHARGE OF ZAGONYI 87 

from the Austrian yoke. He served in the Hun- 
garian cavalry ; and in a desperate charge upon 
the Austrians, in which half the force were killed, 
Zagonyi was wounded and captured and for two 
years was a prisoner. He was finally released on 
condition that he leave his country forever. As 
an experienced soldier, he was welcomed by Gen- 
eral Fremont and was authorized to raise a com- 
pany to be known as Fremont's Body-Guard. In 
a few days two full companies, composed mostly 
of very young men, had been enrolled. A little 
later another company composed entirely of Ken- 
tucky boys was included in the guards. They 
were all magnificently mounted on picked horses 
and very handsomely uniformed. Because of 
their outfit and name they soon excited the envy 
of the other parts of the army who used to call 
them the " kid-glove brigade." Although well- 
trained and enthusiastic, they had no active serv- 
ice until October, 1861, when Zagonyi, who had 
been appointed their major, was ordered to take 
one hundred and sixty of his men and explore the 
country around Springfield, Missouri, through 
which the main army was intending to advance. 
There were rumors that a Confederate force was 



88 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

approaching to take possession of the city of 
Springfield and the body-guard marched seventeen 
hours without stopping in order to occupy this 
town before the enemy should arrive. As they 
came within two miles of Springfield, however, 
they were met by a farmer who informed them 
that the Confederates had beaten them in the race 
to Springfield and were already in camp on a hill 
about half a mile west of the town. Their rear 
was protected by a grove of trees and there was a 
deep brook at the foot of the hill. The only way 
to approach them was through a blind lane which 
ran into fences and ploughed fields. This was 
covered by sharpshooters and infantry while four 
hundred Confederate horsemen were posted on 
the flank of the main body of infantry which 
guarded the top of the hill. Altogether the force 
numbered over two thousand men. It seemed an 
absolutely hopeless undertaking for a little body 
of tired boys to attack twenty times their own 
number. Zagonyi, however, had been used to 
fighting against odds in his battles with the Aus- 
trians. He hurriedly called his men together and 
announced to them that he did not intend to go 
back without a fight after riding so far. 



THE CHARGE OF ZAGONYI 89 

" If any of you men," he said, " are too tired or 
too weak, or too afraid, go back now before it is 
too late. There is one thing about it," he added 
grimly, " if there are any of us left when we are 
through we won't hear much more about kid 
gloves." 

Not a man stirred to go back. Zagonyi gath- 
ered them into open order and drawing his sabre 
gave the word to start up the fatal lane. At first 
there was no sight or sound of any enemy, but as 
the horses broke into a run, there was a volley 
from the woods and a number of men swayed in 
their saddles and sank to the ground. Down the 
steep, stony lane they rushed in a solid column in 
spite of volley after volley which poured into their 
ranks. Some leaped, others crashed through 
fences and across the ploughed fields and jumped 
the brook and finally gained the shelter of the foot 
of the hill. There was a constant whistle of bul- 
lets and scream of minie balls over their heads. 
They stopped for a minute to re-form, for nearly 
half the squad was down. Zagonyi detached 
thirty of his best horsemen and instructed them 
to charge up the hill at the Confederate cavalry 
which, four hundred strong, were posted along 



90 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

the edge of the wood, and to hold them engaged 
so that the rest of the force could make a front 
attack on the infantry. The rest of the troop 
watched the little band gallop up the hillside and 
they were fully half-way up before it dawned upon 
the Confederates that these thirty men were really 
intending to attack a force over ten times their 
number. As they swept up the last slope, the 
Confederate cavalry poured a volley from their 
revolvers instead of getting the jump on them by 
a down-hill charge. 

Lieutenant Mathenyi, another Hungarian and 
an accomplished swordsman, led the attack and 
cut his way through the first line of the Confed- 
erate horsemen, closely followed by the score of 
men who had managed to get up the hill. With 
their sabres flashing over their heads, they disap- 
peared in the gray cloud of Confederates which 
awaited them. At that moment Zagonyi gave 
the word for the main charge and his column 
opened out and rushed up the hill from all sides 
like a whirlwind. Even as they breasted the slope 
they saw the solid mass of Confederate cavalry 
open out and scatter in every direction while a 
blue wedge of men cut clear through and turned 



THE CHARGE OF ZAGONYI 91 

back to sabre the scattering Confederates. With 
a tremendous cheer, Zagonyi and the rest of the 
band rushed on to the massed infantry. - ^ 

They had time for only one volley when the 
young horsemen were among them, cutting, 
thrusting, hacking and shooting with their re- 
volvers. In a minute the main body followed the 
example of the cavalry and broke and scattered 
everywhere. Some of them, however, were real 
fighters ; they retreated into the woods and kept 
up a murderous fire from behind trees. One young 
Union soldier dashed in after them to drive them 
out, but was caught under the shoulders by a 
grape-vine and swept off his horse and hung 
struggling in the air until rescued by his com- 
rades. Down into the village swarmed the fugi- 
tives with the guards close at their heels. At a 
great barn just outside of the village a number of 
them rallied and drove back the Kentucky squad 
which had been pursuing them. This time Za- 
gonyi himself dashed up, and shouting, " Come on, 
old Kentuck, I'm with you," rushed at the group 
which stood in the doorway. As he came on, a 
man sprang out from behind the door and leveled 
his rifle at Zagonyi's head. The latter spurred 



92 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

his horse until he reared, and swinging him 
around on his hind legs, cut his opponent clear 
through the neck and shoulders with such tre- 
mendous force that the blood spurted clear up to 
the top of the door. 

Another hero of the fight was Sergeant Hunter, 
the drill-master of the squad. It had always been 
an open question with the men as to whether he 
or Major Zagonyi was the better swordsman. In 
this fight Hunter killed five men with his sabre, 
one after the other, showing off fatal tricks of fence 
against bayonet and sabre as coolly as if giving a 
lesson, while several men fell before his revolver. 
His last encounter was with a Southern lieutenant 
who had been flying by, but suddenly turned and 
fought desperately. The sergeant had lost three 
horses and was now mounted on his fourth, 
a riderless, unmanageable horse which he had 
caught, and was somewhat at a disadvantage. 
In spite of this he proceeded to give those of his 
squad who were near him a lecture on the fine 
points of the sabre. 

" Always parry in secant," said he, suiting his 
action to the word, " because," he went on, slash- 
ing his opponent across the thigh, "a regular 



THE CHARGE OF ZAGONYI 93 

fencer like this Confed is liable to leave himself 
open. It is easy then to ride on two paces and 
catch him with a back-hand sweep," and at the 
words he dealt his opponent a last fatal blow 
across the side of the head which toppled him out 
of his saddle. 

A young Southern officer magnificently mounted 
refused to follow the fugitives, but charged alone 
at the line of the guards. He passed clear through 
without being touched, killing one man as he went. 
Instantly he wheeled, charged back and again 
broke through, leaving another Union cavalryman 
dead. A third tirtie he cut his way clear up to 
Zagonyi's side and suddenly dropping his sabre, 
placed a revolver against the major's breast and 
fired. Zagonyi, however, was like lightning in 
his movements. The instant he felt the pressure 
of the revolver he swerved so that the bullet passed 
through his tunic, and shortening his sabre he ran 
his opponent through the throat killing him before 
he had time to shoot again. 

Holding his dripping sabre in his hand, the 
major shouted an order to his men to come to- 
gether in the middle of the town. One of the first 
to come back was his bugler, whom Zagonyi had 



94 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

ordered to sound a signal in the fiercest part of 
the fight. The bugler had apparently paid no at- 
tention to him, but darted off with Lieutenant Ma- 
thenyi's squad and was seen pursuing the flying 
horsemen vigorously. When his men were gath- 
ered together, Major Zagonyi ordered him to step 
out and said : 

" In the middle of the battle you disobeyed my 
order to sound the recall. It might have meant 
the loss of our whole company. You are not 
worthy to be a member of this guard and I dismiss 
you." 

The bugler was a little Frenchman and he nearly 
exploded with indignation. 

•* No," he said, " me, you shall not dismiss," and 
he showed his bugle to his major with the mouth- 
piece carried away by a stray bullet. " The mouth 
was shoot off," he said. " I could not bugle wiz 
my bugle and so I bugle wiz my pistol and sabre." 

The major recalled the order of dismissal. 

So ended one of the most desperate charges of 
the Civil War. One hundred and forty-eight men 
had defeated twenty-two hundred, with the loss of 
fifty-three killed and more than thirty wounded. 



CHAPTER VI 
The Locomotive Chase 



CHAPTER VI 
THE LOCOMOTIVE CHASE 

Courage does not depend upon success. Some- 
times it takes a braver man to lose than to win. A 
man may meet defeat and even death in doing his 
duty, but if he has not flinched or given up, he has 
not failed. A brave deed is never wasted whether 
men live or die. 

In the spring of 1862, James J. Andrews and a 
little band of nineteen other men staked their lives 
and liberty for the freedom of Tennessee and al- 
though they lost, the story of their courage helped 
other men to be brave. 

At the beginning of the Civil War, the eastern 
part of Tennessee was held by the Confederates 
although the mountaineers were for the most part 
Union men. The city of Chattanooga was the 
key to that part of the state and was held by the 
Confederates. A railroad line into that city ran 
through Georgia and was occupied by the South- 
ern army. If that could be destroyed, Chattanooga 



98 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

could be cut off from reenforcements and cap- 
tured by the small body of Union troops which 
could be risked for that purpose. This road was 
guarded by detachments of Confederate troops 
and extended for two hundred miles through Con- 
federate territory and it seemed as if it could not 
be destroyed by any force less than an army. 
There was no army that could be spared. 

One April evening a stranger came to the tent 
of General O. M. Mitchel, commander of the Union 
forces in middle Tennessee, and asked to see the 
general. The sentry refused to admit him unless 
he stated his name and errand. 

" Tell the general," said the man quietly, " that 
James J. Andrews wants to speak to him on a 
matter of great importance." 

The sentry stared at him for there were few in 
the army who had not heard of Andrews, the 
scout, but fewer still who had ever seen him. No 
man had passed through the enemy's lines so 
many times, knew the country better or had been 
sent more often on dangerous errands. In a 
minute he was ushered in to where General 
Mitchel sat writing in the inner tent. With his 
deep-set gray eyes and waving hair brushed back 



THE LOCOMOTIVE CHASE 99 

from his broad, smooth forehead, he looked more 
like a poet than a fighter. The general noticed, 
however, that his eyes never flickered and that 
although he spoke in a very low voice, there was 
something about him that at once commanded at- 
tention. Andrews wasted no time. 

" General Mitchel," he said, " if you will let me 
have twenty-four men, I will capture a train, burn 
the bridges on the Georgia railroad and cut off 
Chattanooga." 

" It can't be done," returned General Mitchel. 

'* Well, general," answered Andrews slowly, 
" don't you think it's worth trying ? You know 
I generally make good on what I set out to do. 
In this matter if we lose, we lose only twenty-five 
men. If we win, we take Chattanooga and all 
Tennessee without a battle." 

There was a long pause while the general stud- 
ied the scout. 

" You shall have the men," he said finally. 

Andrews saluted and left the tent. That night 
twenty-four men from three regiments were told 
that they were to have the first chance to volunteer 
for secret and dangerous service. Not a man chosen 
refused to serve. The next evening they were told 



loo BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

to meet at a great boulder at sunset about a mile 
below the camp and wait until joined by their 
captain. Each man was furnished with the camp 
countersign as well as a special watchword by 
which they could know each other. One by one 
the men gathered at dusk, recognized each other 
by the watchword and sat down in the brush back 
of the boulder to wait. Just at dark there was 
a rustling in the underbrush at the other side of 
the road and the scout stepped out, joined them 
and gave the countersign. Without a word, he 
moved to the thick bushes at one corner of the 
boulder and pushing them aside showed a tiny 
hidden path which wound through the brush. 
Into this he stepped and beckoned them to follow. 
The path twisted back and forth among the great 
stones and trees and through patches of under- 
brush and the men in single file followed Andrews. 
Finally nearly a mile from the road, he led them 
down into a dense thicket in a little ravine. There 
the brush had been cut out so as to make a kind 
of room in the thicket about ten feet square. 
When they were all inside, the scout motioned 
them to sit down and then circled around through 
the underbrush and doubled back on his track so 



THE LOCOMOTIVE CHASE loi 

as to make sure that they had not been followed 
by any spy. Then he returned and lighted a small 
lantern which hung to one of the saplings and for 
the first time his men had a good look at their 
captain. As usual, Andrews wasted no time. 

" Boys," he said simply, " I have chosen you to 
come with me and capture a train from an army 
and then run it two hundred miles through the 
enemy's country. We will have to pass every 
train we meet and while we are doing this we must 
tear up a lot of track and burn down two bridges. 
There is every chance of being wrecked or shot 
and if we are captured, we will be hung for spies. 
It is a desperate chance and I picked you fellows 
out as the best men in the whole army to take 
such a chance. If any of you think it is too 
dangerous, now is the time to stand up and draw 
out." 

There was a long pause. Each man tried to 
see what his companions were thinking of in the 
dim light. 

" Well, captain," at last drawled a long, lank 
chap with a comical face, who had the reputation 
of being the worst daredevil in his regiment, *' I 
would like to stand up for you've got me kind of 



102 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

scared, but my foot's asleep and I guess I'll have 
to go with you." 

" That's the way I feel," said the man next to 
him, as every one laughed, and the same answer 
went all around the circle. 

In a whisper the scout then outlined his plan. 
The men were to change their uniforms and put 
on the butternut-colored clothes of the South and 
to carry no arms except a revolver and bowie- 
knife. Then they were to cross the country on 
foot until they got to Chattanooga and were then 
to go back on their tracks by train and meet at 
a litde town called Marietta in the middle of 
Georgia. No one would, of course, suspect men 
coming out of a Confederate city to be Union 
soldiers. If questioned they were to say that they 
were Kentuckians on their way to join the South- 
ern army. At Marietta they were to take rooms 
at the Marietta Hotel and meet at the scout's 
room on the following Saturday morning at two 
o'clock. 

Disguised as a quinine seller, Andrews reached 
Marietta ahead of the others. At the time ap- 
pointed, he sat fully dressed in the silent hotel 
waiting for the arrival of his little company and 



THE LOCOMOTIVE CHASE 103 

wondering how many would appear. Just as the 
town dock struck the hour from the old-fashioned 
court house, there came a light tapping at the 
door and one by one nineteen of the twenty-four 
glided in and reported for duty. All had gone 
through various adventures and several had only 
escaped capture by quick thinking and cool action. 
One of the missing ones had been delayed by a 
wreck and did not reach Marietta in time, two 
others were forced to enlist in the Southern army, 
and two more reached Marietta but by some mis- 
take did not join the others. The twenty who 
were left, however, were the kind of men whose 
courage flares highest when things seem most 
desperate and they were not at all discouraged by 
the loss of a fifth of their force, and they all agreed 
with Brown, the man whose foot had been asleep, 
when he drawled out in his comical way, " The 
fewer fellows the more fun for those who are left." 
After reporting, they went back to their rooms 
and got what sleep they could. At daylight they 
were all at the ticket office in time for the north- 
bound mail train. In order to prevent any 
suspicion, each man bought a ticket for a differ- 
ent station along the line in the direction of 



I04 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

Chattanooga. Eight miles out of Marietta was a 
little station called Big Shanty where the train was 
scheduled to stop twenty minutes for breakfast. 
It was a lonely place at the foot of Kenesaw 
Mountain and there were only the station, a freight- 
house, a restaurant and one or two dwelling houses. 
Andrews had planned to capture the train there, 
believing that there would be few, if any, by- 
standers at so small a place early in the morning. 
As the train came around the curve of the moun- 
tain, however, the scout and his men, who were 
scattered through the train, were horrified to see 
scores of tents showing white through the morn- 
ing mist. A detachment of Confederate soldiers 
was in camp there and it was now necessary for 
the little squad of Union soldiers to capture the 
train not only from its crew and passengers, but 
under the very eyes of a regiment. There was no 
flinching. The minute the train stopped there was 
the usual wild scramble by the passengers for 
breakfast in which the engineer, fireman and con- 
ductor joined. In a minute the engine was left 
entirely unguarded. In those days engines were 
named like steamboats, and this one had been 
christened " General." Andrews and his men 



THE LOCOMOTIVE CHASE 105 

loitered behind. In his squad were two engineers 
and a fireman. These at once hurried forward 
and began to uncouple the engine with its tender 
and three baggage-cars. The rest of the party- 
grouped around, playing the part of bystanders, 
but with their hands on their revolvers, for within 
a dozen feet of the engine stood a sentry with his 
loaded musket in his hand watching the whole 
thing, while other sentries and a large group of 
soldiers were only a few yards farther off. The 
men worked desperately at the coupling and 
finally succeeded in freeing the cars. Then the 
engineers and fireman sprang into the cab of the 
engine while Andrews stood with his hand on the 
rail and foot on the step, and the rest of the band 
tumbled into the baggage-cars. This was the 
most critical moment of all, for although the 
watching soldiers might think it natural to change 
the crew, yet their suspicions would certainly be 
aroused at the sight of fifteen men climbing into 
baggage-cars. The nearest sentry cocked his 
musket and stepped forward to investigate. At 
this moment Brown climbed into the engine along 
with one of the engineers, coolly smoking a cigar. 
Poking his head out of the window he called back 



io6 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

as if to one of the crew, " Tell those fellows not to 
eat up all the breakfast. We'll be back just as 
soon as we can take those other cars on at the sid- 
ing." All this time Andrews was standing with 
his foot on the step watching the men enter the 
baggage-cars. The track was on a high bank and 
it was necessary for the first man to be raised up 
on the shoulders of two others in order to open the 
door. Once inside, the other men were tossed up 
to him and he pulled them in like bags of meal. 
Finally there were only two left and these jumped, 
caught the outstretched hands of two inside and 
were hauled up into the car. Not until then did 
Andrews step aboard under the very nose of the 
suspicious sentry. The engineer was so anxious 
to start that he pulled the throttle wide open and 
for a few seconds the wheels spun round and round 
without catching on the rails. He finally slowed 
up enough to allow the wheels to bite and the 
engine started off with a jerk which took all the 
soldiers in the baggage-cars oflf their feet. Just at 
this moment the fat engineer waddled out of the 
eating-house shouting at the top of his voice, 
" Stop, thief I Stop, thief ! " He was followed by 
the fireman who bellowed to the sentry, " Shoot 



THE LOCOMOTIVE CHASE 107 

'em, shoot 'em ! They're Yanks I " It was too 
late. The General was taking the first curve on 
two wheels, leaving the quiet little station swarm- 
ing and buzzing like a hornet's nest struck by a 
stone. The train had been captured without los- 
ing a man. 

Now came the even more difficult part of the 
undertaking, to run the engine for two hundred 
miles through an enemy's country and to force it 
past all the other trains between Big Shanty and 
Chattanooga. The first thing to do was to pre- 
vent any message of the capture being sent on 
ahead. There was no telegraph station at Big 
Shanty, but there was no telling how soon word 
would be sent back to the nearest telegraph opera- 
tor. Accordingly, four miles out the engine was 
stopped and a man named Scott, who had been a 
great coon-hunter before entering the army, 
shinned up a telegraph pole and sawed through 
the wires. While he was doing this, the rest 
of the party took up one of the rails and loaded 
it into a baggage-car. Others piled in a lot 
of dry railroad ties to be used in burning the 
bridges. The General was an old-style engine 
the like of which is never seen nowadays. It had 



io8 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

one of the round, funny smoke-stacks which we 
still see on old postage stamps and it burned cord- 
wood instead of coal, but it was a good goer for 
those times and was soon whirling through the 
enemy's country at what seemed to the raiders a 
tremendous rate of speed. Before long they were 
compelled to stop at one of the stations to take 
in wood and water. Andrews explained to the 
station-agent that they were agents of General 
Beauregard running a powder-train down to the 
Confederate headquarters at Corinth. At one 
station named Etowah, they found an old locomo- 
tive belonging to a local iron company standing 
there with steam up. It carried the name of 
Jonah and so far as the raiders were concerned, it 
certainly lived up to its name. Brown, who was 
acting as engineer, wanted to stop and put Jonah 
out of business, but Andrews decided to push on. 
It was a fatal mistake. At Kingston, thirty miles 
from their starting place, they learned that the 
local freight coming from Chattanooga was about 
due, so Andrews put his engine over on the siding 
and waited. After a long delay, the freight ar- 
rived, but it carried on its caboose a red flag show- 
ing that another train was behind. Andrews 



THE LOCOMOTIVE CHASE 109 

stepped up to the conductor and indignantly in- 
quired how any train dared delay General Beau- 
regard's special powder-cars. 

" Well, you see," said the freight's conductor, 
" the Yanks have captured Huntsville thirty miles 
from Chattanooga and special trains are being run 
to get everything out." 

Andrews realized that General Mitchel had 
started against Chattanooga and that if he could 
burn even one bridge, the capture of the city was 
certain. Another long wait and the special freight 
came in, but it carried another fatal red flag. It 
turned out that it was so large that it was being run 
in two sections. There was nothing to do but wait. 
By this time crowds of passengers and train-hands 
had gathered around the so-called powder-train, all 
curious to look it over. The four men in the engine 
sat there smoking, seemingly unconcerned. As a 
matter of fact, however, they were ready any mo- 
ment to fight for their lives. If any of the crowd 
opened the baggage-cars and saw the other men 
hidden there, no amount of explanation could per- 
suade them that there was not something wrong. 
If the waiting was hard on the men in the engine, 
it was still worse for the men crouched back in the 



no BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

cars, not knowing what was wrong and expecting 
to hear the alarm given any moment. For an 
hour and five minutes the Union train was kept at 
Kingston. At last a whistle was heard and the 
long-expected freight passed by and the General 
was again on its way. A mile out from Kings- 
ton the coon-hunter was sent up another telegraph 
pole and the wires again cut. The rest of the 
party were leisurely trying to loosen another rail 
with the poor tools which they had, when from far 
in the rear a sound was heard which brought the 
man at the wires down with a run. It was the 
whistle of an engine coming their direction and 
meant that in some mysterious way the enemy 
was on their track. 

" Pull, you men ! " shouted Andrews. " They've 
got word somehow and they're after us." 

Again the whistle sounded, this time much 
nearer, and with a last frantic pull the rail broke 
and eight men tumbled head over heels down an 
embankment. They were up in a minute and 
scrambled into the baggage-car and the old Gen- 
eral was ofT once more at top speed. At Adairs- 
ville, the next station, a freight and passenger 
train were waiting and there Andrews heard that 



THE LOCOMOTIVE CHASE ni 

another express was due from Chattanooga which 
had not yet arrived. There was no time to wait 
now that the pursuit had begun and the old Gen- 
eral was pushed at full speed in order to reach the 
next siding before meeting the express. The nine 
miles between stations were covered in as many 
minutes, Brown and the fireman heaping on the 
cord-wood and soaking it with kerosene-oil until 
the fire-plate was red hot. They reached the sta- 
tion just in time, for the express was about to pull 
out when the whistle of Andrews' train was heard, 
and it backed down so as to allow the " powder- 
train" to take the side track. It stopped, how- 
ever, in such a manner as to completely close up 
the other end of the switch. The engineer and 
conductor of the express were plainly suspicious 
and refused to move their train until Andrews had 
answered their questions. With the pursuing en- 
gine on his track, any more delay would be fatal. 
Cocking his revolver, Andrews poked it into the 
stomach of the engineer. 

" My instructions from General Beauregard," 
he said, " are to rush this train through and to 
shoot any one that tries to delay it and I am go- 
ing to begin on you." 



112 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

The engineer lost all further desire to ask ques- 
tions, climbed into his cab and pulled out. The 
way was now clear to Chattanooga. Beyond the 
next station Andrews stopped once more to cut 
the wires and to try to take up a section of the 
track, when right behind suddenly sounded the 
whistle of an engine like the scream of some re- 
lentless bird of prey that could not be turned from 
its pursuit. Far down the track rushed a loco- 
motive crowded with soldiers armed with rifles. 
Two minutes more would have saved the day for 
Andrews. The rail bent, but did not break, 
although the men tugged at it frantically until the 
bullets began pattering around them. There was 
only just time to jump aboard and the General 
was off again with the Confederate engine thun- 
dering close behind. 

The story of this pursuer is the story of two 
men who refused to give up and who won out by 
accepting the one chance in a thousand which 
ordinary men would let go by. When the stolen 
train whirled off at Big Shanty there were two 
men who didn't waste any time in shouting or 
swearing. They were Fuller, the conductor of 
the stolen train, and Murphy, the foreman of the 



THE LOCOMOTIVE CHASE 113 

Atlanta railway machine shops. There was no 
telegraph station nor any locomotive at hand in 
which to follow the runaways. Apparently it was 
hopeless, yet out of all the crowd of civilians and 
soldiers who rushed around and asked questions 
and shouted answers, Fuller and Murphy were 
the only two who took the long chance and ran 
after the flying train. The rest of the crew could 
not help laughing to see two men chase a loco- 
motive on foot. But Murphy and the other let 
them laugh and ran on. Before they had gone a 
half mile they found a hand-car on a siding. This 
they lifted over to the main track, manned the 
pump-bars and were soon flying along at the rate 
of some fifteen miles an hour. As they came near 
Etowah the hand-car suddenly flew off the track 
and went rolling down the embankment. It had 
met the first of the broken rails. The two men 
were much bruised and shaken up, but no bones 
were broken and they managed to hoist the hand- 
car back on to the rails again and were soon on 
their way, this time keeping a lookout for any 
traps ahead. At Etowah they found old "Jonah" 
puffing on the siding, the engine that Brown had 
advised blowing up. It was at once pressed into 



114 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

service, loaded with soldiers and in a minute was 
flying toward Kingston, where Andrews had his 
life-shortening wait of over an hour. Fuller knew 
of the tangle of trains at that point and told his 
escort to get their muskets ready and be prepared 
for a fight, but Andrews had been away just four 
minutes when the pursuers reached the station, 
and Fuller there found himself stopped by three 
heavy trains. It was hopeless to wait for them to 
move, and besides old Jonah was not much on 
speed. Fuller and his men jumped out, ran 
through to the farthest train, uncoupled the en- 
gine and one car, in spite of the protests of its 
crew, filled it with forty armed men and once 
more started after the flying General. 

It was their whistle which so startled Andrews 
and his men when they were breaking the second 
rail. Fuller and Murphy saw what they had done 
and managed to reverse the engine in time to pre- 
vent a wreck. Again at this point ordinary men 
would have given up the chase for it was impossi- 
ble to go farther in that engine or to get it over 
the broken rail, but these Confederates were not 
ordinary men. Leaving their escort they started 
down the track again on foot alone, doggedly and 



THE LOCOMOTIVE CHASE 115 

relentlessly after their stolen General. Before they 
had gone far they met the mixed train that had 
told Andrews of the express. They signaled so 
frantically that it stopped and when the crew 
learned that the so-called " powder-train " was on 
its way to destroy the great bridges which formed 
the backbone of their railway, they consented to 
turn back. So uncoupling the locomotive and the 
tender and filling them with armed soldiers and 
civilians from among the passengers, Fuller and 
Murphy made their sixth start. On foot, by hand- 
car, in two locomotives, on foot again and now 
once more in a locomotive, they began what was 
to be the last lap of this race on which a city and 
a state depended. 

Beyond Adairsville the Confederates could see 
far ahead in the distance Andrews and his men 
making desperate efforts to raise the rail. With 
long screams from her whistle, the Confederate 
engine fairly leaped over the tracks. The rail 
bent slowly, but the spikes still held. Two 
minutes, or even a minute more would break 
the track and the road and bridges would be 
defenseless before the Union raiders. But it was 
not to be. Andrews and his men tugged at the 



ii6 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

stubborn rail until the pursuing engine was so 
close that the bullets were dropping all around 
them and then sprang into the engine and thun- 
dered off again. If only a littie time could be 
gained the Union men could burn the Oostinaula 
Bridge. So while the engine was running at a 
speed of nearly a mile a minute, the men in the 
last car crowded into the next and the last car was 
dropped off in the hope that it would block the 
road for the pursuer. But the engine behind 
pushed it ahead until the next station was reached 
where it could be switched off the main track. 
This slowed the chaser's speed, however, so that 
the General was able to take on wood and water 
and also to cut the wires beyond the station so 
that the news of their coming would not be tele- 
graphed ahead and give the station-master a 
chance to either side-track them or block the track. 
The pursuing engine began to gain again and 
the litde band of Union soldiers moved into the 
first car and the end of the second car was smashed 
and it was cut loose. Railroad ties were also 
dropped across the track and time enough was 
gained once more for the General to take on wood 
and water at two more stations and to cut the 



THE LOCOMOTIVE CHASE 117 

wires beyond each. Twice they stopped and tried 
in vain to raise a rail, but the pursuers came within 
rifle range each time before they could finish. The 
rain prevented the burning of the bridges and 
now slowly and surely the pursuing engine began 
to gain. The raiders tried every way to block 
the track. At one point they spied a spare rail 
near a sharp curve. Stopping the engine they 
fitted it into the track in such a way that it seemed 
certain to derail the Confederate engine. The 
latter came thundering on at full speed, struck 
the hidden rail, and leaped at least six inches 
from the rail, but came down safely and went 
whirling along as if nothing had happened. Not 
once in a hundred times could an engine have 
kept the track after such a collision. This was the 
time. Now they were too close to the General to 
allow of any more stoppages even for wood and 
water. Andrews decided to risk everything on 
one last stroke. A mile or so ahead was a wooden- 
covered bridge. At his orders out of the last car 
his men swarmed into the engine filling every inch 
of space, even the tender and the cow-catcher being 
covered with men. All of the fuel left was piled 
into the one remaining car, smeared with oil and 



ii8 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

set afire. Both the doors were opened and the 
draught as it was whirled along soon fanned the 
fire into furious flames. They dashed into the 
dark of the covered bridge with the car spurting 
flame from both sides. Right in the middle of 
the bridge it was uncoupled and left burning fast 
and furiously. It did not seem possible that any 
engine could pass through such a barrier. There 
was just enough pressure left in the boiler to reach 
the next wood-yard and the Union scouts looked 
back anxiously at the bridge. In a minute they 
heard around a far-away curve the whistle which 
sounded to them like the screech of a demon. 
The Confederates had dashed into the bridge and 
pushed the flaming car ahead of them to the next 
switch. The Union scouts had played their last 
card. There would be no chance of taking in 
wood before they were overtaken. One thing 
only was left. They stopped the engine, sprang 
out, reversed the locomotive and sent it dashing 
back to collide with their pursuer and then sepa- 
rated to try to make their way back some three 
hundred miles through the enemy's country to the 
Union lines. The Confederates, when they saw 
the engine coming, reversed their own and 



THE LOCOMOTIVE CHASE 1 19 

kept just ahead of this last attack of the old 
General until its fires died down and it came to a 
stop. 

Mitchel, the Union general, but thirty miles west 
of Chattanooga, waited in vain for the engine 
which never came. Chattanooga was saved 
and the most daring railroad raid in history had 
failed. 

The story of the fate of the brave men who 
volunteered for the forlorn hope is a sad one. 
Several were captured that same day and all but 
two within a week. These two were overtaken and 
brought back when they were just on the point of 
reaching the Union outposts and had supposed 
themselves safe. Even the two who reached 
Marietta but did not take the train with the others 
were identified and added to the band of pris- 
oners. Being in civilian clothes within an 
enemy's lines, they were all held as spies and the 
heroic Andrews and seven others were tried 
and executed. Of the others, eight, headed 
by Brown, overpowered the guards in broad 
daylight and made their escape from Atlanta, 
Georgia, and finally reached the North. The 
other six started with them, but were recaptured 



I20 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

and held as prisoners until exchanged in the eariy 
part of 1863. 

So ends the story of an expedition that failed in 
its immediate object, but that succeeded in the 
example which these brave men set their fellows. 



CHAPTER VII 
Sheridan's Ride 



CHAPTER VII 
SHERIDAN'S RIDE 

There are as many different kinds of courage 
as there are different kinds of men. Some men 
are brave because they were born so. They are 
no more to be praised for their bravery than a 
bulldog deserves credit because it is a natural 
born fighter or a hare deserves blame because it 
specializes in running away. Some men belong 
to the bulldog class. They are brave because it 
is natural for them to be brave. Others belong 
to the hare-family and they show far more real 
courage in overcoming their natural instincts than 
does the other for whom it is natural to do brave 
deeds. Much also depends on the circumstances. 
We all know from our own experience of athletes 
who can play a good winning game, and who 
perform well against inferior competitors. The 
rarer type, however, is the boy or man who can 
play a good up-hill game and who with all the 
odds against him, is able to fight it out and never 



124 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

to let up or give up until the last point is scored 
or the last yard is run and who often is able to 
win against better, but less dogged, less courageous 
competitors. It is so in battles. It is easy for 
any commander to be courageous and to take un- 
usual chances when he is winning. The thrill of 
approaching victory is a stimulant which makes 
even a coward act like a brave man. Even Gen- 
eral Gates, the weak, vacillating, clerkly, self- 
seeking, cowardly general of the Revolutionary 
War, whose selfishness and timidity were in such 
contrast to Washington's self-sacrifice and cour- 
age, was energetic and decisive at the battle of 
Saratoga after Benedict Arnold, who was there 
only as a volunteer, had made his brave, success- 
ful charge on the British column in spite of 
Gates' orders. After attacking and dispersing 
the reserved line of the British army, Arnold 
called his men together again and attacked the 
Canadians who covered the British left wing. 
Just as he had cut through their ranks, a wounded 
German soldier lying on the ground took delib- 
erate aim at Arnold and killed his horse and 
shattered his leg with the same bullet. As he 
went down, one of his men tried to bayonet the 



SHERIDAN'S RIDE 125 

wounded soldier who had fired, but even while 
disentangling himself from his dead horse and 
suffering under the pain of his broken leg, Arnold 
called out, " For God's sake, don't hurt him, he's 
a fine fellow," and saved the life of the man who 
had done his best to take his. That was the hour 
when Benedict Arnold should have died, at the 
moment of a magnificent victory while saving the 
life of a man who had injured him. Gates went 
on with the battle, closed in on the British and in 
spite of their stubborn defense, attacked them 
fiercely for almost the only time in his career as a 
general and completely routed them. There is no 
doubt that on that occasion after Arnold's charge 
Gates displayed a considerable amount of bravery, 
yet such bravery cannot really be termed courage 
of the high order which was so often displayed 
by Washington, by William of Orange and later 
by his grandson, William of England, by Fabius 
the conqueror of Hannibal and by many other 
generals who were greatest in defeat. 

Napoleon once said that the highest kind of 
courage was the two-o'clock-in-the-morning cour- 
age. He meant that at that gray hour, when the 
tide of life is at its ebb before the dawn, a man 



126 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

who is brave is brave indeed. The best test of 
this kind of courage is in defeat. Fabius showed 
that in the long, wasting campaign which he 
fought against Hannibal, one of the greatest 
generals of his or any other age. Following, 
retreating, harassing, Fabius always refused a 
pitched battle until his enemies at Rome forced 
the appointment of Minucius as joint dictator 
with him. In spite of the protests of Fabius, the 
army was divided and the younger and rasher 
Minucius offered battle with his army. He was 
like a child before the crafty Hannibal who con- 
cealed a great force of men in ravines around an 
apparently bare hill and then inveigled Minucius 
into attacking a small force which he sent up to 
the top of this hill as a bait to draw him on. 
Once there the ambuscade of Hannibal attacked 
the Roman army on all sides and almost in a mo- 
ment it was in disorder and a retreat was com- 
menced which was about to become a rout when 
Fabius hurried up and by his exhortations and 
steadfast courage rallied the men, re-formed 
them, drove through Hannibal's lighter-armed 
troops and finally occupied the hill in safety. 
The grateful Minucius refused to act as com- 



SHERIDAN'S RIDE 127 

mander any further, but at once insisted upon 
thereafter serving under Fabius. 

At the Battle of Boyne, that great battle be- 
tween William of England and his uncle, 
James II, which was to decide whether England 
should be a free or a slave nation, William showed 
the same kind of courage. In spite of chronic 
asthma, approaching age and a frail body. King 
William was a great general. He never appeared 
to such advantage as at the head of his troops. 
Usually of reserved and saturnine disposition, 
danger changed him into another man. On this 
day, while breakfasting before the battle, two 
field-pieces were trained on him and a six-pound 
ball tore his coat and grazed his shoulder draw- 
ing blood, and dashing him from his horse. He 
was up in an instant, however, and on that day 
in spite of his feeble health and wounded shoulder, 
was nineteen hours in the saddle. The crisis 
came when the English soldiers charged across 
the ford of the Boyne River. General Schomberg, 
William's right-hand and personal friend, was 
killed while rallying his troops. Bishop Walker, 
the hero of the siege of Londonderry, had been 
struck by a chance shot and the English, who had 



128 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

hardly obtained a firm foothold on the opposite 
bank, commenced to waver. At this moment 
King William forced his horse to swim across, 
carrying his sword in his left hand, for his right 
arm was stif[ with his wound, and dashed up to 
rally the troops. As he rode up, the disorganized 
regiment recognized their king. 

" What will you do for me ? " he cried, and 
almost in an instant he had rallied the men and 
persuaded them to stand firm against the attacks 
of the ferocious Irish horsemen. 

" Gentlemen," he said, " I have heard much of 
you. Let me see something of you," and charg- 
ing at their head, this middle-aged, wounded 
invalid by sheer courage shattered the Irish and 
French troops and saved his kingdom. 

Our own Washington was never greater than 
in defeat and not once but many times rallied a 
defeated and disheartened army and saved the 
day. At the Battle of Monmouth, the traitorous 
Charles Lee had turned what should have been a 
great victory into a disorderly retreat. After out- 
flanking Cornwallis, instead of pressing his ad- 
vantage, he ordered his men to retreat into 
a near-by ravine. Lafayette's suspicions were 



SHERIDAN'S RIDE 129 

aroused and he sent in hot haste to Washington 
who arrived on the field of battle just as the 
whole army in tremendous disorder was pouring 
out of the marsh and back over the neighboring 
ravine before the British advance. At that mo- 
ment Washington rode up pale with anger and 
for once lost control of a temper which cowed all 
men when once aroused. 

" What is the meaning of all this ? " he shouted 
to Lee and when he received no answer, repeated 
the question with a tremendous oath. Then im- 
mediately realizing the situation, he sent Lee 
back to the rear and wheeled about to stop the 
retreat and form a new front. Riding down the 
whole line of retreating soldiers, the very sight of 
him steadied and rallied them and in less than 
half an hour the line was reformed and Washing- 
ton drove back the British across the marsh and 
the ravine until night put an end to the battle. 
Before morning the whole British force had re- 
treated, leaving their wounded behind and the 
Battle of Monmouth had been changed by the 
courage and fortitude of one man from defeat into 
a victory for the American forces. 

The most striking instance in the Civil War of 



I30 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

what the courage of one brave, enduring, un- 
faltering man can do was at the Battle of Cedar 
Creek. In the year 1864, General Sheridan, the 
great cavalry leader, took command of the Army 
of the Shenandoah. Sheridan was an ideal 
cavalry leader. Brave, dashing, brilliant, he had 
commanded more horsemen than had any general 
since the days of the Tartar hordes of Tamerlane 
and Genghis Khan. There was no watchful 
waiting with Sheridan. This he had shown at 
the great mountain battle of Chattanooga. At 
that battle, Missionary Ridge was the keystone of 
the Confederate position. It was occupied by 
Confederate batteries and swarming with Con- 
federate troops. A storming party was sent from 
the main body of the Union forces to drive out 
the Confederates who held the woods on the flanks 
of the Ridge. The orders were to attack the Con- 
federates and hold the captured positions until the 
main body could come up. Grant was watching 
the battle through his field-glasses and saw the at- 
tacking party gain possession of the slopes of the 
Ridge. Suddenly, to his surprise and horror, the 
whole regiment charged directly up the Ridge. It 
was a mad thing to do for the top was held by a 



SHERIDAN'S RIDE 131 

tremendous force of Confederates and guarded by- 
massed batteries. General Grant called General 
Granger up to him and said angrily : 

" Did you order those men up, Granger ? " 

" No," said the general, " they started up with- 
out orders. When those fellows get started, all 
hell can't stop 'em." 

General Grant then sent word to General 
Sheridan to either stop the men or take the 
Ridge. 

" I guess it will be easier to take the Ridge 
than it will be to stop them," said Sheridan. 

Before starting, he borrowed a flask and waved 
it toward the group of Confederate officers who 
were standing on top of the Ridge in front of the 
headquarters of Bragg, the Confederate general. 

" Here's at you," he shouted, drinking to them. 
They could plainly see his action through their 
field-glasses and immediately two field-guns, which 
were known as Lady Breckenridge and Lady 
Buckner, were trained at Sheridan and his group 
of officers and fired. One shell struck so near 
Sheridan as to splash dirt all over him. 

" I'll take those guns just for that," was all 
he said and, followed by his officers, he dashed 



132 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

up the Ridge after the dinibing, attacking- 
party. The way was so steep that the men had 
to climb up on their hands and knees while the 
solid shot and shell tore great furrows in their 
ranks. Sheridan was off his horse as soon as the 
slope became steep, and, although he had started 
after the charge, was soon at the front of the men. 
They recognized him with a tremendous cheer. 

" I'm not much used to this charging on foot, 
boys," he said, *' but I'll do the best I can," and 
he set a pace which soon brought his men so far 
up that the guns above could not be depressed 
enough to hit them. Behind him came the whole 
storming party clambering up on their hands and 
knees with their regimental flags flying every- 
where, sometimes dropping as the bearers were 
shot, but never reaching the ground because they 
would be caught up again and again by others. 
At last they were so near that the Confederate ar- 
tillerymen, in order to save time, lighted the fuses 
of their shells and bowled them down by hand 
against the storming party. Just before they 
reached the summit, Sheridan formed them into a 
batde-line and then with a tremendous cheer, they 
dashed forward and attacked the Ridge at six 



SHERIDAN'S RIDE 133 

different points. Tlie Confederates had watched 
their approach with amazement and amusement. 
When they found, however, that nothing seemed 
to stop them, they were seized with a panic and as 
the six desperate storming parties dashed upon 
them from different angles, after a few minutes' 
fast fighting, they broke and retreated in a hope- 
less rout down the other side of the Ridge. Sheri- 
dan stopped long enough to claim Lady Brecken- 
ridge and Lady Buckner as his personal spoils of 
war and forming his men again, led them on to a 
splendid victory. 

As soon as he took command of the Army of 
the Shenandoah, aggressive fighting at once be- 
gan. Twice he defeated Jubal Early, once at 
Winchester and again at Fisher's Hill, while one 
of his generals routed the Rebels so completely in 
a brilliant engagement at Woodstock that the bat- 
tle was always known as the Woodstock Races, 
the Confederate soldiers being well in front in 
this competition. Finally, General Sheridan had 
massed his whole army at Cedar Creek. From 
there he rode back to Washington to have a con- 
ference with General Halleck and the Secretary of 
War. When that was finished with his escort he 



134 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

rode back to Winchester, some twelve miles from 
Cedar Creek, two days later. There he received 
word that all was well at his headquarters and he 
turned in and went to bed intending to join the 
army the next day. Six o'clock the next morning 
an aide aroused him with the news that artillery 
firing could be heard in the direction of Cedar 
Creek. Sheridan was out of bed in a moment 
and though it was reported that it sounded more 
like a skirmish than a battle, he at once ordered 
breakfast and started for Cedar Creek. As he 
came to the edge of Winchester he could hear the 
unceasing roar of the artillery and was convinced 
at once that a battle was in progress and from the 
increase of the sound judged that the Union Army 
must be falling back. The delighted faces of the 
Confederate citizens of Winchester, who showed 
themselves at the windows, also convinced him 
that they had secret information from the battle- 
field and were in raptures over some good news. 
With twenty men he started to cover the twelve 
miles to Cedar Creek as fast as their horses could 
gallop. Sheridan was riding that day a magnifi- 
cent black, thoroughbred horse, Rienzi, which 
had been presented to him by some of his ad- 



SHERIDAN'S RIDE 135 

mirers. Like Lee's gray horse " Traveler " and 
the horse Wellington rode at Waterloo, " Copen- 
hagen," Rienzi was to become famous. Before 
Sheridan had gone far and just after crossing 
Mill Creek outside of Winchester, he commenced 
to meet hundreds of men, some wounded, all de- 
moralized, who with their baggage were all rush- 
ing to the rear in hopeless confusion. Just north 
of Newtown he met an army chaplain digging his 
heels into the sides of his jaded horse and making 
for the rear with all possible speed. Sheridan 
stopped him and inquired how things were going 
at the front. 

" Everything is lost," replied the chaplain, " but 
it will be all right when you get there." 

The parson, however, in spite of this expression 
of confidence, kept on going. Sheridan sent back 
word to Colonel Edwards, who commanded a 
brigade at Winchester, to stretch his troops across 
the valley and stop all fugitives. To most men 
this would have been the only plan of action pos- 
sible, to stop the fugitives and rally at Winchester. 
Sheridan, however, was not accustomed to de- 
fensive fighting and instantly made up his mind 
that he would rally his men at the front and if 



136 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

possible, turn this defeat into a victory. The 
roads were too crowded to be used and so he 
jumped the fence into the fields and rode straight 
across country toward the drumming guns at 
Cedar Creek, which showed where the main battle 
was raging. From the fugitives, as he rode, 
Sheridan obtained a clear idea of what had hap- 
pened. His great rival. Early, had taken advan- 
tage of his absence to obtain revenge for his 
previous defeats. Just after dawn he had made 
an attack in two different directions on the Union 
forces and had started a panic which had seized 
all the soldiers except one division under Getty and 
the cavalry under Lowell. The army which Sher- 
idan met was a defeated army in full rout. As he 
dashed along, the men everywhere recognized him, 
stopped running, threw up their hats with a cheer 
and shouldering their muskets, turned around 
and followed him as fast as they could. He di- 
rected his escort to ride in all directions and an- 
nounce that General Sheridan was coming. From 
all through the fields and roads could be heard 
the sound of faint cheering and everywhere men 
were seen turning, rallying and marching forward 
instead of back. Even the wounded who had 




Sheridan Hurrying to Rally His Men 



SHERIDAN'S RIDE 137 

fallen by the roadside waved their hands and hats 
to him as he passed. As he rode, Sheridan took 
off his hat so as to be more easily recognized and 
thundered along sometimes in the road and some- 
times across country. As he met the retreating 
troops, he said : 

'* Boys, if I had been with you this morning this 
wouldn't have happened. The thing to do now 
is to face about and win this battle after all. 
Come on after me as fast as you can." 

So he galloped the whole twelve miles with the 
men everywhere rallying behind him and follow- 
ing him at full speed. At last he came to the 
forefront of the battle where Getty's division and 
the cavalry were holding their own and resisting 
the rapid approach of the whole Confederate 
Army. Sheridan called upon his horse for a last 
effort and jumped the rail fence at the crest of the 
hill. By this time the black horse was white with 
foam, but he carried his master bravely up and 
down in front of the line and the whole brigade 
of men rose to their feet with a tremendous cheer 
and poured in a fierce fire upon the approaching 
Confederate troops. Sheridan rode along the 
whole front of the line and aroused a wild enthu- 



138 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

siasm which showed itself in the way that the first 
Rebel charge was driven back. Telling Getty's 
and Lowell's men to hold on, he rode back to 
meet the approaching troops. By half-past three 
in the afternoon, Sheridan had brought back all 
the routed troops, reformed his whole battle line 
and waving his hat, led a charge riding his same 
gallant black horse. As they attacked the Con- 
federate front, Generals Merritt and Custer made a 
fresh attack and the whole Confederate Army fell 
back routed and broken and was driven up the 
valley in the same way that earlier in the day 
they had driven the Union soldiers. Once again 
the presence of one brave man had turned a de- 
feat into a victory. 

Sheridan took no credit to himself in his report 
to Lincoln, simply telegraphing, " By the gallantry 
of our brave officers and men, disaster has been 
converted into a splendid victory." 

" My personal admiration and gratitude for 
your splendid work of October 19th," Lincoln 
telegraphed back and the whole country rang 
with praises of Phil. Sheridan and his wonder- 
ful ride. The day after the news of the battle 
reached the North, Thomas Buchanan Read 



SHERIDAN'S RIDE 139 

wrote a poem entitled "Sheridan's Ride," with 
a stirring chorus. 

The last verse sang the praise both of the rider 
and the horse : 

" What was done ? what to do ? A glance told him both, 
Then striking his spurs with a terrible oath, 
He dashed down the line, mid a storm of huzzas. 
And the wave of retreat checked its course there because, 
The sight of the master compelled it to pause. 
With foam and with dust the black charger was gray ; 
By the flash of his eye, and the red nostrils' play, 
He seemed to the whole great army to say, 
' I have brought you Sheridan all the way 
From Winchester, down to save the day.' " 



CHAPTER VIII 
The Bloody Angle 



CHAPTER VIII 
THE BLOODY ANGLE 

It takes courage to charge, to rush over a 
space swept by shot and shell and attack a body 
of men grimly waiting to beat back the onset with 
murderous volleys and cold steel. Sometimes, 
though, it takes more courage to stand than to 
charge, to endure than to attack. The six hun- 
dred gallant horsemen of that Light Brigade who 
charged an army at Balaclava were brave men. 
The six hundred Knights of St. John who at the 
siege of Malta by Solyman the Magnificent de- 
fended the tiny fortress of St. Elmo against thirty 
thousand Turks until every man lay dead back of 
the broken ramparts and the power and might of 
the Turkish Empire had been wasted and shat- 
tered against their indomitable defense were 
braver. The burghers of Leyden who lived 
through the siege of their city on shoe-leather, 
rats and bark, who baked their last loaves and 
threw them down to the besiegers in magnificent 
defiance, who shouted down to the Spaniards that 



144 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

they would eat their left arms and fight with their 
right, and who slept on the ramparts night and 
day until they drove back the greatest army in all 
Europe were braver. 

" It's dogged that does it," said the grim Duke 
of Wellington when his thin red line of English 
fighters endured through that long summer day 
against attack after attack until at twilight the 
Old Guard were repulsed for the last time and the 
great battle of Waterloo won. 

Many men are brave in flashes. They are 
good for a dash. Few are those who can go the 
distance. 

This is the story of a Union general who could 
endure and whose courage flared highest when 
defeat and death seemed certain. It is the story 
of a little band of men who were brave enough to 
stand against an army and whose endurance won 
a seven-day battle and opened the way for the 
capture of the Confederate capital. 

It was the fourth year of the War of the Rebel- 
lion, and the end was not yet in sight. The Con- 
federate cause had fewer men, but better officers. 
Robert E. Lee was undoubtedly the most able 
general in the world at that time. Stonewall 



THE BLOODY ANGLE 145 

Jackson had been his right arm, while Longstreet, 
Johnston, Early and a host of other fighting lead- 
ers helped him to defeat one Union army after 
another. The trouble with the Union leaders was 
that they didn't know how to attack. There had 
been McClellan, a wonderful organizer, but who 
preferred to dig entrenchments rather than fight 
and who never believed that he had enough men 
to risk a battle. 

Then came Meade who won the great battle of 
Gettysburg and beat back the only invasion of 
the North, but who failed to follow up his advan- 
tage and had settled down to the old policy that 
the North knew so well of watchful waiting. At 
last came the Man. He had been fighting in the 
West and he had won, — not important battles, but 
more important, the confidence of the people and 
of Abraham Lincoln, the people's president. For 
this new man had a new system of generalship. 
His tactics were simple enough. He believed 
that armies were made to use, not to save. He 
believed in finding the enemy and hammering 
and hammering and hammering away until some- 
thing broke — and that something was usually the 
enemy. His name was Ulysses S. Grant. 



146 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

" He fights," was all that President Lincoln 
said about him when a party of politicians came to 
ask that he be removed. That was enough. 
What the North wanted was a fighter. Other 
generals would fight when they had to and were 
satisfied to stop if they defeated the enemy or 
broke even, but Grant was like old Charles Martel, 
Charles the Hammerer, who won his name when 
he saved all Europe from the Saracens on the plains 
of Tours by a seven-day battle. The great host 
of horsemen which had swept victorious through 
Asia, Africa and half the circle of the Mediterra- 
nean whirled down on the solid mass of grim 
Northmen. For six long days Charles Martel 
hammered away at that flashing horde of wild 
warriors. On the seventh his hammer strokes 
shattered the might of the Moslems and they 
broke and fled, never to cross the Pyrenees again. 
Now like Charles, the Hammerer of the Union 
Army was facing his great test, the terrible Seven 
Days in the Wilderness. Between him and the 
Confederate capital lay Lee's veteran army en- 
trenched in that wild stretch of Virginia territory 
which was well named the Wilderness. Every 
foot of the puzzling woods, ravines, thickets 



THE BLOODY ANGLE 147 

and trails were known to the Confederates and 
well they ought to know it since they had al- 
ready won a great battle on nearly the same field. 
In this tangled waste an army that knew the 
ground had a tremendous advantage. Lee chose 
his battle-field, but did not believe that Grant 
would join battle. He was to learn to know his 
great opponent better. Grant would always fight. 
On May 4, 1864, the head of Grant's army met 
Lee's forces on one of the few roads of the 
Wilderness, known as the Orange Plank Road. 
The battle was joined. At first the Union forces 
drove the Confederates back into the thick woods. 
There they were reinforced and the knowledge of 
the field began to tell. Everywhere Confederate 
soldiers were sent by short cuts to attack the en- 
tangled Union forces and before long the Union 
line was shattered and driven back only to form 
again and fight once more for six long days. 
And what a battle that was ! As in the fierce 
forest-fight between David and Absalom the wood 
devoured more people that day than the sword 
devoured. The men fought at close quarters and 
in the tangled thickets of stunted Virginia pine 
and scrub-oak they could scarcely see ten yards 



148 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

ahead. Every thicket was alive with men and 
flashed with musketry while the roar and rattle of 
guns on all sides frightened the deer and rab- 
bits and wildcats that before that day had been 
the only dwellers in those masses of underbrush. 
The men fought blindly and desperately in both 
armies. Artillery could not be used to much 
advantage in the brush. It was largely a battle 
of musket and bayonet and wild hand-to-hand 
fights in the tangle of trees. The second day the 
Confederate lines were rolled back to the spot 
where Lee himself stood. Just as they were 
breaking, down the plank road at a steady trot 
came a double column of splendid troops paying 
no attention to the rabble and rout around them. 
Straight to the front they moved. It was the 
brigade of Longstreet, Lee's great " left hand." 
At once the Union advance was stopped and the 
Confederates began to reform their lines. At 
this moment from the pines streamed another 
Federal brigade with apparently resistless force 
down upon the still confused line. Then it was 
that a little force of Texans did a brave deed 
They saw that if the Union advance was not 
checked, their men would not have time to form. 



THE BLOODY ANGLE 149 

Although only eight hundred strong, they never 
hesitated, but with a wild Rebel yell and without 
any supports or reinforcements, charged directly 
into the flank of the marching Union column of 
many times their number. There was a crash, and 
a tumult of shouts and yells which settled down 
into a steady roar of musketry. In less than ten 
minutes half of the devoted band lay dead or 
wounded. But they had broken the force of the 
Federal advance and had given the Confederate 
line time to rally. 

Back and forth, day after day the human tide 
ebbed and flowed until the lonely Wilderness was 
crowded with men, echoing with the roar and 
rattle of guns and stained red with brave blood. 
At times in the confusion scattered troops fired 
upon their own men, and Longstreet was wounded 
by such an accident. 

At one place the Federal forces had erected log 
breastworks. These caught fire during the battle 
and both forces fought each other over a line of 
fire through which neither could pass. From 
every thicket different flags waved. The forces 
were so mixed that men going back for water 
would find themselves in the hands of the enemy. 



I50 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

In places the woods caught fire and men fought 
through the rolling smoke until driven back by the 
flames that spared neither the Blue nor the Gray. 
Both sides would then crawl out to rescue the 
wounded lying in the path of the fire. In some 
places where the men had fought through the 
brush, bushes, saplings and even large trees were 
cut off by bullets four or five feet from the ground as 
clean and regularly as if by machinery. For the 
first few days the Confederates had the advantage. 
They knew the paths and the Union men were 
driven back and forth among the woods in a way 
that would have made any ordinary general re- 
treat. But Grant was not an ordinary general. 
The more he was beaten the harder he fought. 
The more men he lost the more he called into ac- 
tion from the reserves. 

" It's no use fighting that fellow," said one old 
Confederate veteran ; " the fool never knows when 
he's beaten. And it's no use shooting at those 
Yanks," he went on ; " half-a-dozen more come to 
take the place of every one we hit." 

At last the Union soldiers got the lay of the 
land. They couldn't be surprised or ambushed 
any more. Then they began to throw up breast- 



THE BLOODY ANGLE 151 

works and to cut down trees to hold every foot 
that they had taken. The Confederates did the 
same and the two long, irregular lines of earth- 
works and log fortifications faced each other all 
the way through the Wilderness. Yet still the 
lines of gray lay between Richmond and the men 
in blue. For six days the men had fought locked 
together in hand-to-hand fights over miles and 
miles of wilderness, marsh and thicket. The 
Union losses had been terrific. All along the line 
the Confederates had won and again and again 
had dashed back the attempts of the Union forces 
to pass through or around their lines. The 
Union Army had lost eleven officers and twenty 
thousand men and had fought for six days without 
accomplishing anything. Yet on that day Grant 
sent to Washington a dispatch in which he wrote : 
** I propose to fight it out on this line if it takes 
all summer." 

Through all this tumult of defeats and losses he 
sat under a tree whittling and directing every 
movement as coolly as if safe at home. Finally the 
great Hammerer chose a spot at which to batter 
and smash with those tremendous strokes of his. 
The Confederates had built a long irregular line of 



152 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

earthworks and timber breastworks running for 
miles through the tangled woods. At one point 
near the center of the lines a half-moon of de- 
fenses jutted out high above the rest of the works. 
At the chord of this half-circle was an angle of 
breastworks back of which the Confederates could 
retreat if driven out of the semicircle. Grant saw 
that this half-moon was the key of the Confeder- 
ate position. If it could be captured and held, 
their whole battle line could be broken and 
crumpled back and the Union Army pass on to 
Richmond. If taken at all, it must be by some 
sudden irresistible attack. He chose General 
Hancock, a daring, dashing fighter, to make the 
attempt for the morning of May 12th. It rained 
hard on the night of May nth and came off bitter 
cold. The men gathered for the attack about ten 
o'clock and huddled together in little groups wet 
and half-frozen. All that long night they waited. 
Just at dawn the word was passed around. Crouch- 
ing in the darkness, a division pressed forward and 
rushed like tigers at the half-circle and began to 
climb the breastworks from two sides. The 
sleepy sentries saw the rush too late. The first 
man over was a young sergeant named Brown. 



THE BLOODY ANGLE 153 

With a tremendous jump he caught a project- 
ing bough, swung himself over Hke a cat and 
landed right in the midst of a crowd of startled 
soldiers. Finding himself entirely alone with a 
score of guns pointed at him, he lost his nerve for 
a minute. 

'* I surrender, don't shoot," he bellowed like a 
bull. At that moment from all sides other soldiers 
dropped over the rampart. 

"I take it all back," shouted Brown, now brave 
again, and to make up for the break in his cour- 
age he rushed into the very midst of the defenders 
and, single-handed, captured the colors. The Con- 
federates were taken entirely by surprise. In the 
dim light they fought desperately, but they were 
attacked from two sides with bullets, bayonets and 
smashing blows from the butt-ends of muskets used 
like clubs. Almost in a moment the entrenchments 
were in the hands of the Union soldiers and over 
three thousand prisoners, two generals and twenty 
cannon were captured. Those who were left took 
refuge back of the angle-breastworks which 
guarded the approach to the half-moon. There 
they fought back the charging troops until Lee, 
who had heard of the disaster, could pour in rein- 



154 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

forcements. He knew full well that this center 
must be retaken at any cost. Every man and gun 
that could be spared was hurried to the spot. Lee 
started then to take command in person. Only 
when the soldiers refused to fight unless he took 
a safe place did he consent to stay back. 

With all his available forces Grant lapped the 
half-circle on every side and began to hammer 
away at this break in the Confederate line. The 
Confederate reinforcements came up first and 
Hancock's men were driven back from the angle 
until they met the reinforcements pouring in from 
the troops outside. For a moment they could not 
face the concentrated fire that came from the rear 
breastworks. Flat on their faces officers and men 
lay in a little marsh while the canister swished 
against the tall marsh-grass and the minie balls 
moaned horribly as they picked out exposed men 
here and there. Soon another regiment came 
up and with a yell the men sprang to their feet 
and dashed at the breastworks which loomed up 
through the little patch of woods through which 
they had retreated. In a minute they had rushed 
through the trees with men dropping on every 
side under the murderous fire. Before them was 



THE BLOODY ANGLE 155 

the grim angle of works to be known forever as 
the Bloody Angle. 

As they came nearer they found themselves in 
front of a deep ditch. Scrambling through this 
they became entangled in an abattis, a kind of 
latticework of limbs and branches. As they 
plunged into this many a man was caught in the 
footlocks formed by the interwoven branches and 
held until he was shot down by the fire back of 
the breastworks. These were made of heavy 
timber banked with earth to a height of about 
four feet. Above this was what was called a 
" head-log " raised just high enough to allow a 
musket to be inserted between it and the lower 
work. Inside were shelves covered with piles of 
buck and ball and minie cartridges. Through 
the ditch and the snares, up and over the breast- 
works charged a Pennsylvania regiment, losing 
nearly one hundred men as they went. 

Once again there was the same confused hand- 
to-hand fighting as had taken place at the outer 
fortifications. This time the result was different. 
The crafty Lee had hurried a dense mass of troops 
through the mist. These men crawled forward in 
the smoke, reserving their fire until they got to the 



156 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

very inside edge of the Angle. Then with the 
terrible long-drawn Rebel yell, they sprang to 
their feet and dashed into the breastworks with a 
volley that killed every Union soldier who had 
crossed over. Down too went the men in front, 
still tangled in the abattis. Every artillery horse 
was shot and Colonel Upton of the 95th Pennsyl- 
vania Volunteers was the only mounted officer in 
sight. 

" Stick to it, boys," he shouted, riding back and 
forth and waving his hat. " We've got to hold 
this point ! " 

In a dense mass the Confederates poured into 
the breastworks and for a moment it seemed as if 
they would sweep the Union forces back and re- 
take the half-moon salient. At this moment the 
Pennsylvanians were reinforced by the 5th Maine 
and the 121st New York, but the Confederates 
had the advantage of the breastworks and the 
Union men began to waver. Then a little two- 
gun battery of the Second Corps did a very brave 
thing. They were located at the foot of a hill 
back of a pine-grove. As the news came that the 
Union men were giving way, they limbered the 
guns, the drivers and cannoneers mounted the 



THE BLOODY ANGLE 157 

horses and up the hill at full gallop they charged 
through the Union infantry and right up to the 
breastworks, the only case of a charge by a bat- 
tery in history. Then in a second they unlim- 
bered their guns and poured in a fire of the tin cans 
filled with bullets called canister which was deadly 
on the close-packed ranks of the Confederates 
hurrying up to the Angle. The Union gunners 
were exposed to the full fire of the men back of 
the breastworks, but they never flinched. The 
left gun fired nine rounds and the right four- 
teen double charges. These cannonades simply 
mowed the men down in groups. Captain Fish 
of General Upton's staff left his men and rushed 
to help this little battery. Back and forth he rode 
before the guns and the caissons carrying stands 
of canister under his rubber coat. 

" Give it to 'em, boys," he shouted. " I'll bring 
you canister if you'll only use it." 

Again and again he rode until, just as he turned 
to cheer the gunners once more, he fell mortally 
wounded. The guns were fired until all of the 
horses were killed, the guns, carriages and buckets 
cut to pieces by the bullets and only two of the 
twenty-three men of the battery were left on their 



158 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

feet. Leaving their two brass pieces which had 
done such terrible execution still on the breast- 
works cut and hacked by the bullets from both 
sides, the lone two marched back through the 
cheering infantry. 

" That's the way to do it," shouted Colonel 
Upton. " Hold 'em, men ! Hold 'em 1 " And 
his men held. 

The soft mud came up half-way to their knees. 
Under the continued tramping back and forth, 
the dead and wounded were almost buried at their 
feet. The shattered ranks backed off a few yards, 
then closed up and started to hold their place out 
in the open against the constantly increasing 
masses of the enemy back of the breastworks of 
the Angle. The space was so narrow that only a 
certain number of men on each side could get 
into action at once. A New Jersey and Vermont 
brigade hurried in to help while on the other side 
General Lee sent all the men that could find a 
place to fight back of the breastworks. Into the 
melee came an orderly who shouted in Colonel 
Upton's ear so as to be heard over the rattle of 
musketry and the roar of yells and cheers : 

*' General Grant says, ' Hold on 1 "* 



THE BLOODY ANGLE 159 

" Tell General Grant we are holding on," 
shouted back Colonel Upton. 

The men in the mud now directed all their fire 
at the top of the breastworks and picked off every 
head and hand that showed above. The Confed- 
erates then fired through the loopholes, or placed 
their rifles on the top log and holding by the 
trigger and the small of the stock lifted the breach 
high enough to fire at the attacking forces. The 
losses on both sides were frightful. A gun and a 
mortar battery took position half a mile back of 
the Union forces and began to gracefully curve 
shells and bombs just over the heads of their com- 
rades so as to drop within the ramparts. Some- 
times the enemy's fire would slacken. Then some 
reckless Union soldier would seize a fence-rail or 
a piece of the abattis and creep close to the breast- 
works and thrust it over as if he was stirring up a 
hornet's nest, dropping on the ground to avoid 
the volley that was sure to follow. One daring 
lieutenant leaped upon the breastworks and took 
a rifle that was handed up to him and fired it into 
the masses of the Confederate soldiers behind. 
Another one was handed up and he fired that and 
was about aiming with a third when he was rid • 



i6o BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

died with a volley and pitched headlong among 
the enemy. 

A little later a party of discouraged Confeder- 
ates raised a piece of a white shelter tent above 
the works as a flag of truce and offered to sur 
render. The Union soldiers called on them to jump 
over. They sprang on the breastworks and hesi- 
tated a moment at the sight of so many leveled 
guns. That moment was fatal to them for their 
comrades in the rear poured a volley into them, 
killing nearly every one. 

All day long the battle raged. Different breast- 
works in the same fortifications flaunted different 
flags. Gradually, however, all along the line the 
firing and the fighting concentrated at the Angle. 
The head logs there were so cut and torn that 
they looked like brooms. So heavy was the fire 
that several large oak trees twenty-two inches in 
diameter back of the works were gnawed down 
by the bullets and fell, injuring some of the South 
Carolina troops. Toward dusk the Union troops 
were nearly exhausted. Each man had fired be- 
tween three and four hundred rounds. Their lips 
were black and bleeding from biting cartridge. 
Their shoulders and hands were coated and black 



THE BLOODY ANGLE i6i 

with grime and powder-dust. As soon as it be- 
came dark they dropped in the knee-deep mud 
from utter exhaustion. But they held. Grimly, 
sternly they held. All the long night through 
they fired away at the breastworks. The trenches 
on the right of the Angle ran red with Union 
blood and had to be cleared many a time of the 
piles of dead bodies which choked them. At last, 
a little after midnight, sullenly and slowly the 
Confederate forces drew back and the half-moon 
and the Bloody Angle were left in possession of 
the Union forces. The seven days' hammering 
and the twenty hours of holding had won the 
fierce and bloody Battle of the Wilderness. 



CHAPTER IX 
Heroes of Gettysburg 



CHAPTER IX 

HEROES OF GETTYSBURG 

Heroes are not made of different stuff from 
ordinary men. God made us all heroes at heart. 
Satan lied when he said " all that a man hath will 
he give for his life." The call comes and com- 
monplace men and workaday women give their 
lives as a very Httle thing for a cause, for an ideal, 
or for others. When the great moment comes, 
the love and courage and unselfishness that lie 
deep in the souls of all of us can flash forth into 
beacon-lights of brave deeds which will stand 
throughout the years pointing the path of high 
endeavor for those who come after. 

Women the world over will never forget how 
Mrs. Strauss came back from the life-boat and 
went down on the Titanic with her husband 
rather than have him die alone. 

Boys have been braver and tenderer their lives 
long because of the unknown hero at Niagara. 
With his mother he was trapped on a floe when 
the ice-jam broke. Slowly and sternly it moved 



i66 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

toward the roaring edge of the cataract. From 
the Suspension Bridge a rope was let down to 
them. Twice he tried to fix it around his mother, 
but she was too old and weak to hold on. The 
floe was passing beyond the bridge and there was 
just time for him to knot the rope around himself. 
Young, active and strong, he would be safe in a 
moment, but his mother would go to death de- 
serted and alone. He tossed the rope away, put 
his arm around his old mother and they went 
over the Falls together. 

Every American sailor has been braver and 
gentler from the memory of Captain Craven who 
commanded the monitor Tecumseh when Fighting 
Farragut destroyed the forts and captured the 
Rebel fleet at Mobile Bay. The Tecumseh was 
about to grapple with the Tennessee, the great 
Rebel ram, when she struck a torpedo, turned 
over and went down bow foremost. Captain 
Craven was in the pilot-house with the pilot. As 
the vessel sank they both rushed for the narrow 
door. Craven reached it first, but stood aside 
saying, " After you, pilot." The latter leaped 
through as the water rushed in and was saved. 
Craven went down with his ship. 



HEROES OF GETTYSBURG 167 

The great moments which are given to men in 
which to decide whether they are to be heroes or 
cowards may come at any time, but they always 
flash through every battle. Danger, suffering and 
death are the stern tests by which men's real 
selves are discovered. A man can't do much pre- 
tending when he is under fire, and he can't make 
believe he is brave or unselfish, or chivalric when 
he is sick, or wounded, or dying. We can be 
proud that the man who went before us made 
good and that we can remember all the great bat- 
tles of the greatest of our wars by the brave deeds 
of brave men. 

The battle of Gettysburg was the most im- 
portant of the Civil War. Lee with seventy 
thousand men was pouring into the North. If he 
defeated Meade and the Union Army, Washing- 
ton, the capital, would fall. Even Philadelphia 
and New York would be threatened. In three 
days of terrible fighting, thirty thousand men 
were killed. In one of the charges one regiment, 
the I St Minnesota, lost eighty-two per cent, of its 
men — more than twice as many as the famous 
Light Brigade lost at Balaclava. Pickett's charge 
of fifteen thousand men over nearly a mile and a 



i68 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

half against the hill which marked the center of the 
Union lines was one of the greatest charges in his- 
tory. When the Confederates were driven back, 
two-thirds of the charging party had been killed 
or wounded. It was the crisis of the war. If that 
charge went home Gettysburg was lost, the Union 
Army would become a rabble and the whole 
strength of the Confederate forces would pass on 
into the North. On the Union batteries depended 
the whole fate of the army. If they could keep 
up a fire to the last moment, the charge must fail. 
Otherwise the picked thousands of the Con- 
federate Army would break the center of the 
Union forces and the battle would be lost. Lee 
gathered together one hundred and fifteen guns 
and directed a storm of shot and shell against the 
Union batteries as his regiments charged up the 
hill. On the very crest was a battery commanded 
by young Cushing, a brother of Lieutenant W. B. 
Cushing, who drove a tiny torpedo launch over a 
boom of logs under the fire of forts, troops and 
iron-clads and destroyed the great Confederate 
iron-clad Albemarle. This Cushing was of the 
same fighting breed. During the battle he was 
shot through both thighs but would not leave his 



HEROES OF GETTYSBURG 169 

post though suffering agonies from the wounds. 
When the charge began he fought his battery as 
fast as the guns could be loaded and fired and his 
grape-shot and canister mowed down the charg- 
ing Confederates by the hundred. In spite of 
tremendous losses the Rebels rushed up the hill 
firing as they came and so fierce was their fire 
and that of the Confederate batteries that of the 
Union officers in command of the batteries just in 
front of the charge, all but two were struck^ But 
the men kept up the fire to the very last. As 
what was left of the Confederates topped the hill, 
a shell struck the wounded Cushing tearing him 
almost in two. He held together his mangled 
body with one hand and with the other fired his 
last gun and fell dead just as the Confederates 
reached the stone wall on the crest. They were 
so shattered by his fire that they were unable to 
hold the hill and were driven back and the battle 
won for the Union. 

Old John Burns was another one of the many 
heroes of Gettysburg. John was over seventy 
years old when the battle was fought and lived in 
a little house in the town of Gettysburg with his 
wife who was nearly as old as he. Burns had 



I70 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

fought in the war of i8i2 and began to get more 
and more uneasy every day as the batde was 
joined at different points near where he was liv- 
ing. The night before the last day of the battle 
the old man went out to get his cow and found 
that a foraging band of Confederates had driven 
her off. This was the last straw. The next day 
regiment after regiment of the Confederate forces 
marched past his house and the old man took 
down his flintlock musket which had done good 
service against the British in 1812 and began to 
melt lead and run bullets through his little old 
bullet mould. Mrs. Burns had been watching him 
uneasily for some time. 

" John, what in the world are you doing there ? " 
she finally asked. 

" Oh," he said, " I thought I would fix up the 
old gun and get some bullets ready in case any of 
the boys might want to use it. There's goin' to 
be some fightin' and it's just as well to get 
ready. There ain't a piece in the army that 
will shoot straighter than Betsy here," and the 
old man patted the long stock of the musket 
affectionately. 

*• Well," said his wife, " you see that you keep 



HEROES OF GETTYSBURG 171 

out of it. You know if the Rebs catch you fightin' 
in citizens' clothes, they'll hang you sure." 

" Don't you worry about me," said John. " I 
helped to lick the British and I ain't afraid of a lot 
of Rebels." 

Finally the long procession of Confederate 
forces passed and for an hour or so the road was 
empty and silent. At last in the distance sounded 
the roll and ratde of drums and through a great 
cloud of dust flamed the stars and stripes and in a 
moment the road was filled with solid masses of 
blue-clad troops hurrying to their positions on 
what was to be one of the great battle-fields of the 
world. As regiment after regiment filed past, old 
John could stand it no longer. He grabbed his 
musket and started out the door. 

" John ! John 1 Where are you going ? " 
screamed his wife, running after him. " Ain't you 
old enough to know better ? " 

" I'm just goin' out to get a little fresh air," said 
John, pulling away from her and hurrying down 
the street. " I'll be back before night sure." 

It was the afternoon of the last day when the 
men of a Wisconsin regiment near the front saw 
a little old man approaching, dressed in a blue 



172 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

swallow-tail coat with brass buttons and carrying 
a long flintlock rifle with a big powder-horn 
strapped about him. 

" Hi, there I " he piped, when he saw the men. 
" I want to jine in. Where'll I go ? " 

The men laughed at the sight. 

"Anywhere," shouted back one of them; 
"there's good fightin' all along the line." 

"Well," said John, "I guess I'll stop here," 
and in spite of their attempts to keep him back, 
he crept up until he was at the very front of 
the skirmish line. There was a lull in the 
fighting just then and there was a good deal of 
joking up and down the line between the men 
and John. 

" Say, grandpa," called out one, " did you fight 
in the Revolution ? " 

" Have you ever hit anything with that old gun 
of yours ? " said another. 

But John was able to hold his own. 

" Sure I fought in the Revolution," he piped 
loudly, " and as for hittin' anything, say, boys, do 
you know that at the Battle of Bunker Hill I had 
sixty-two bullets in my pocket. I had been 
loadin' and firin' fifty times and I had shot forty- 



HEROES OF GETTYSBURG 173 

nine British officers when suddenly I heard some 
one yellin' to me from behind our Hnes and he 
says to me, ' Hi, there, old dead-shot, don't you 
know that this is a battle and not a massacre ? ' 
I turns around and right behind me was General 
George Washington, so I saluted and I says, 
' What is it, General ? ' and he says, ' You stop 
firin' right away.* * Well,' I said, * General, I have 
only got twelve more bullets ; can't I shoot those ? ' 
' No,' he says to me, 'you go home. You've done 
enough,' and he says, ' don't call me General, call 
me George.' " 

This truthful anecdote was repeated along the 
whole line and instantly made John's reputation 
as a raconteur. He was allowed to establish him- 
self at the front of the line and in a minute, as the 
firing commenced, he was fighting with the best 
of them. They tried to persuade him to take a 
musket from one of the many dead men who were 
lying around, but like David, John would not use 
any weapon which he had not proved. He stuck 
to old Betsy and although he did not make quite 
so good a record as at the Battle of Bunker Hill, 
according to his comrades he accounted for no 
less than three Confederates, one of whom was an 



174 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

officer. Before the day was over he received 
three wounds. Toward evening there was an 
overwhelming rush of the Confederates which 
drove back the Union soldiers and the Wisconsin 
regiment fell back leaving poor old John lying 
there among the other wounded. He was in a 
dilemma. Although his cuts were only flesh- 
wounds, yet he would bleed to death unless they 
were properly dressed. On the other hand if he 
was found by the Rebels in civilian clothes with 
his rifle, he would undoubtedly be shot according 
to military law. The old man could not, however, 
bear the thought of parting with old Betsy, so he 
crawled groaningly toward a hollow tree where he 
managed to hide the old flint-lock and the 
powder-horn and soon afterward attracted the at- 
tention of the Confederate patrol which was going 
about the field attending to the wounded. At 
first they were suspicious of him. 

" What are you doing, old man, wounded on a 
battle-field in citizens' clothes?" one of the officers 
asked. 

"Well," said John, " I was out lookin* for a cow 
which some of you fellows carried off and first 
thing I knew I was hit in three places. So long 




o 



PQ 



HEROES OF GETTYSBURG 175 

as you got my cow, the least you can do is to 
carry me home." 

This seemed fair to the officer and a stretcher 
was brought and the old man was carried back to 
the house. His next fear was that his wife would 
unconsciously betray him to the patrol that were 
bringing him into the house. Sure enough as 
they reached the door, old Mrs. Burns came rush- 
ing out. 

" John," she screamed, " I told you not to go 
out." 

" Shut up, Molly," bellowed John at the top of 
his voice. " I didn't find the old cow, but I did the 
best I could and I want you to tell these gentle- 
men that I am as peaceable an old chap that ever 
lived, for they found me out there wounded with a 
lot of soldiers and think I may have been doin* 
some fightin'." 

Mrs. Burns was no fool. 

" Gentlemen," she cried out, " I can't thank you 
enough for bringing back this poor silly husband 
of mine. I told him that if he went hunting to- 
day for cows or anything else, he would most likely 
find nothing but trouble, and I guess he has. 
He's old enough to know better, but you leave 



176 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

him here and I'll nurse him and try to get some 
sense into his head." 

So the patrol left Burns at his own house, not 
without some suspicions, for the next day an 
officer came around and put him through a severe 
cross-examination which John for the most part 
escaped by pretending to be too weak to answer 
any particularly searching question. Mrs. Burns 
nursed the old man back to health again and 
never let a day go by without a number of im- 
pressive remarks about his foolhardiness. The 
old man hadn't much to say, but the first day after 
he got well he disappeared and came back an 
hour or so later with old Betsy and the powder- 
horn which he found safe and sound in the tree 
where he left them. These he hung again over 
the mantelpiece in readiness for the next war, 
" for," said John, " a man's never too old to fight 
for his country." 

Another hero in that battle was Lieutenant Bay- 
ard Wilkeson. Only nineteen years old he com- 
manded a battery in an exposed position on the 
Union right. His two guns did so much damage 
that Gordon, the Confederate general, could not 
advance his troops in the face of their deadly fire. 



HEROES OF GETTYSBURG 177 

Wilkeson could be seen on the far-away hilltop 
riding back and forth encouraging and directing 
his gunners. 

General Gordon sent for the captains of two of 
his largest batteries. 

"Train every gun you've got," he said, "on 
that man and horse. He's doing more damage 
than a whole Yankee regiment." 

Quietly the guns of the two far-apart positions 
were swung around until they all pointed directly 
at that horseman against the sky. A white hand- 
kerchief was waved from the farthest battery and 
with a crash every gun went ofT. When the 
smoke cleared away, man and horse were down, 
the guns dismounted and the gunners killed. The 
Confederate forces swept on their way unchecked 
across the field that had been swept and winnowed 
by Wilkeson's deadly guns. As they went over 
the crest, they found him under his dead horse 
and surrounded by his dead gunners still alive but 
desperately wounded. He was carried in to the 
Allen House along with their own wounded and 
given what attention was possible, which was lit- 
tle enough. It was plain to be seen that he was 
dying. Suffering from that choking, desperate 



178 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

thirst which attacks every wounded man who has 
lost much blood he faintly asked for water. There 
was no water to be had, but finally one of the Con- 
federate officers in charge managed to get a full 
canteen off a passing soldier. Wilkeson stretched 
out his hands for what meant more to him than 
anything else in the world. Just then a wounded 
Confederate soldier next to him cried out, " For 
God's sake give me some." 

Wilkeson stopped with the canteen half to his 
mouth and then by sheer force of will passed it over 
to the other. In his agonizing thirst the wounded 
Confederate drank every drop before he could stop 
himself. Horror-stricken he turned to apologize. 
The young lieutenant smiled at him, turned 
slightly — and was gone. It took more courage 
to give up that flask of cold water than to fight 
his battery against the whole Confederate Army. 

The hero-folk on that great day were not all 
men and boys. Among the many, many monu- 
ments that crowd the field of Gettysburg there is 
one of a young girl carved from pure translucent 
Italian marble. It is the statue of Jennie Wade, 
the water-carrier for many a wounded and dying 
soldier during two of those days of doom. Al- 



HEROES OF GETTYSBURG 179 

though she knew it not, Jennie was following in 
the footsteps of another woman, that unknown 
wife of a British soldier at the Battle of Saratoga 
in the far-away Revolutionary days. When 
Burgoyne's army was surrounded at Saratoga, 
some of the women and wounded men were sent 
for safety to a large house in the neighborhood 
where they took refuge in the cellar. There they 
crouched for six long days and nights while the 
cannon-balls crashed through the house overhead. 
The cellar became crowded with wounded and 
dying men who were suffering agonies from 
thirst. It was only a few steps to the river, but 
the house was surrounded by Morgan's sharp- 
shooters and every man who ventured out with a 
bucket was shot dead. At last the wife of one of 
the soldiers offered to go and in spite of the 
protests of the men ventured out. The American 
riflemen would not fire upon a woman and again 
and again she went down to the river and brought 
back water to the wounded in safety. 

Jennie Wade was a girl of twenty who lived in 
a red-brick house right in the path of the battle. 
They could not move to a safer place, for her mar- 
ried sister was there with a day-old baby, so the 



i8o BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

imprisoned family was in the thick of the battle. 
Recently when the old roof was taken off to be 
repaired, over two quarts of bullets were taken 
from it. During the first day, Jennie's mother 
moved her daughter and her baby so that her 
head rested against the foot of the bed. She had 
no more been moved than a bullet crashed through 
the window and struck the pillow where her head 
had lain an instant before. While her mother 
watched her daughter and the baby, Jennie car- 
ried water to the soldiers on the firing-line. At 
the end of the first day fifteen soldiers lay dead in 
the little front yard and all through that weary 
day and late into the night Jennie was going back 
and forth filling the canteens of the wounded and 
dying soldiers as they lay scattered on that stricken 
field. Throughout the second day she kept on 
with this work and many and many a wounded 
soldier choking with thirst lived to bless her 
memory. On this day a long procession of blue- 
clad men knocked at the door of the house ask- 
ing for bread until the whole supply was gone. 
After dark on the second day, Jennie mixed up a 
pan of dough and set it out to rise. She got up 
at daybreak and as she was lighting a fire, a 



HEROES OF GETTYSBURG i8i 

hungry soldier-boy knocked at the door and 
asked for something to eat. Jennie started to mix 
up some biscuit and as she stood with her sleeves 
rolled up and her hands in the dough, a minie 
ball cut through the door and she fell over dead 
without a word. Her statue stands as she must 
have appeared during those first two days of bat- 
tle. In one hand she carries a pitcher and over 
her left arm are two army-canteens hung by their 
straps. Not the least of the heroic ones of that 
battle was Jennie Wade who died while thus en- 
gaged in homely, helpful services for her country. 
These are the stories of but a few who fought 
at Gettysburg that men might be free and that 
their country might stand for righteousness. The 
spirit of that battle has been best expressed in a 
great poem by Will H. Thompson with which we 
end these stories of some of the brave deeds of the 
greatest battle of the Civil War. 

HIGH TIDE AT GETTYSBURG 

A cloud possessed the hollow field, 
The gathering battle's smoky shield ; 
Athwart the gloom the lightning flashed, 
And through the cloud some horsemen dashed, 
And from the heights the thunder pealed. 



i82 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

Then, at the brief command of Lee, 
Moved out that matchless infantry, 
With Pickett leading grandly down 
To rush against the roaring crown 
Of those dread heights of destiny. 

Far heard above the angry guns, 
A cry across the tumult runs, 

The voice that rang through Shiloh's woods 

And Chickamauga's solitudes, 
The fierce South cheering on her sons. 

Ah, how the withering tempest blew 

Against the front of Pettigrew ! 

A khamsin wind that scorched and singed, 
Like that infernal flame that fringed 

The British squares at Waterloo ! 

" Once more in Glory's van with me t '* 

Virginia cries to Tennessee, 

" We two together, come what may. 
Shall stand upon those works to-day." 

(The reddest day in history.) 

But who shall break the guards that wait 

Before the awful face of Fate ? 

The tattered standards of the South 
Were shriveled at the cannon's mouth, 

And all her hopes were desolate. 

In vain the Tennesseean set 
His breast against the bayonet ; 

In vain Virginia charged and ragedj 

A tigress in her wrath uncaged, 
Till all the hill was red and wet ! 



HEROES OF GETTYSBURG 183 

Above the bayonets mixed and crossed, 
Men saw a gray, gigantic ghost 

Receding through the battle-cloud, 

And heard across the tempest loud 
The death-cry of a nation lost ! 

The brave went down ! Without disgrace 

They leaped to Ruin's red embrace ; 
They only heard Fame's thunder wake. 
And saw the dazzling sun-burst break 

In smiles on Glory's bloody face ! 

They fell, who lifted up a hand 

And bade the sun in heaven to stand ! 

They smote and fell, who set the bars 

Against the progress of the stars, 
And stayed the march of Motherland. 

They stood, who saw the future come 
On through the fight's delirium ! 

They smote and stood, who held the hope 

Of nations on that slippery slope 
Amid the cheers of Christendom ! 

God lives ! He forged the iron will 
That clutched and held that trembUng hill. 
God lives and reigns ! He built and lent 
Those heights for Freedom's battlement. 
Where floats her flag in triumph still ! 

Fold up the banners ! Smelt the guns I 
Love rules ; her gentler purpose runs. 

A mighty mother turns in tears 

The pages of her battle years. 
Lamenting all her fallen sons ! 



CHAPTER X 
The Lone Scout 



CHAPTER X 

THE LONE SCOUT 

Single-handed exploits, where a man must 
depend upon his own strength and daring and 
coolness, rank high among brave deeds. Occa- 
sionally a man has confidence enough in himself 
to penetrate alone into the enemy's country and 
to protect his life and do his endeavor by his own 
craft and courage. Of such was Hereward, the 
Last of the English, who, like Robin Hood, many 
centuries later, led his little band of free men 
through fen and forest and refused to yield even 
to the vast resources of William the Conqueror. 
Once disguised as a swineherd he entered the 
very court of the king and sat with the other 
strangers and wanderers at the foot of the table 
in the great banquet-hall and saw in the distance 
the man who was first to conquer and then to 
make unconquerable all England. To this day 
we love to read of his adventures on that scout- 
ing trip. How the servants who sat at meat with 



i88 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

him played rough jokes on him until, forgetful of 
his enormous strength, he dealt one of them a 
buffet which laid him lifeless across the table with 
a broken neck. How he was taken up to the 
head of the table and stood before William on an 
instant trial for his life. His loose jerkin had 
been torn during the struggle and showed his 
vast chest and arms covered with scars of old 
wounds which no swineherd would ever have re- 
ceived. The old chronicle goes on to tell how 
they imprisoned him for the night and when his 
jailer came to fetter his legs with heavy irons, he 
stunned him with a kick, unlocked the doors and 
gates, broke open the stable door, selected the 
best horse in the king's stable and, armed with an 
old scythe blade which he had picked up in the 
barn, cut his way through the guard and rode all 
night by the stars back to his band. 

In 1862 Corporal Pike of the Fourth Ohio 
Regiment led an expedition for a hundred miles 
through the enemy's country, which was worthy 
of Hereward himself. The expedition consisted 
of Corporal James Pike, who held all positions 
from general to private and who also had charge 
of the commissary department and was head of 



THE LONE SCOUT 189 

the board of strategy. The corporal was a de- 
scendant of Captain Zebulon Pike the great Indian 
fighter and inherited his ancestor's coolness and 
daring. Old Zebulon used to say that he never 
really knew what happiness was until he was in 
danger of his life and that when he started into a 
fight, it was as if all the music in the world was 
playing in his ears and that a battle to him was 
like a good dinner, a game of ball and a picnic 
all rolled into one. The corporal was very much 
this way. He had taken such particular pleasure 
in foolhardy exploits that his officers decided to 
try him on scout duty. There he did so well 
that General Mitchel's attention was attracted to 
him. 

In April, 1862, it was of great importance for the 
general's plans to obtain information in regard to 
the strength of the Confederates in Alabama, and 
to have a certain railroad bridge destroyed so as to 
cut off the line of communications with the forces 
farther south. Out of the whole regiment the gen- 
eral picked Corporal Pike. The corporal's plan of 
procedure was characteristic of the man. He wore 
his regular full blue uniform and throughout the 
first part of his trip made no attempt at disguise 



I90 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

or concealment. This was not as reckless as it 
sounds. The country was filled with Confeder- 
ate spies and messengers who almost invariably 
adopted the Union uniform and it had this advan- 
tage — if captured, he could claim that he was in his 
regular uniform and was entitled to be treated as a 
soldier captured on the field of battle and not hung 
as a spy. The corporal, however, did not attach 
any very great weight to the protection of this uni- 
form, as he figured out that if he were caught burn- 
ing bridges and obtaining reports of Confederate 
forces, they would hang him whatever the color 
of his uniform. He had no adventures until he 
drew near Fayetteville in Tennessee. He spent 
the night in the woods and bright and early the 
next morning rode into the village and up to the 
hotel and ordered breakfast for himself and a simi- 
lar attention for his horse. The sight of a Union 
soldier assembled all the unoccupied part of the 
population and in a few minutes there were three 
hundred men on the sidewalk in front of the hotel. 
As the corporal came back from looking after his 
horse, for he would never eat until he had seen 
that old Bill was properly cared for, a man 
stepped up and inquired his name. 




Corporal Pike 



THE LONE SCOUT 191 

" My name, sir," said the corporal, " is James 
Pike of the Fourth Ohio Cavalry, which is located 
at Shelbyville. What can I do for you ? " 

There was a few moments' silence and then a 
g-reat laugh went up as the crowd decided that 
this was some Confederate scout, probably one of 
Morgan's rangers in disguise. 

" What are you doing down here ? " asked an- 
other. 

** I am down here," said Pike coolly, " to de- 
mand the surrender of this town just as soon as I 
can get my breakfast and find the mayor." 

The crowd laughed loudly again and the cor- 
poral went in to breakfast, where he sat at a table 
with a number of Confederate officers with whom 
he talked so mysteriously that they were fully con- 
vinced that he must be one of Morgan's right- 
hand men. After breakfast he ordered his horse 
and started out, first saying good-bye to the crowd 
who were still waiting for him. 

" If you're from the North," said one, " why 
don't you show us a Yankee trick before you go ? " 
for the Southerners were thoroughly convinced 
that all Yankees were sly foxes full of sudden 
schemes and stratagems. 



192 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

" Well, I will before long," said Pike, as he 
waved good-bye and galloped off. 

Five miles out of the village he came to a fork 
in the road where one road led to Decatur, which 
was where the main Confederate forces were lo- 
cated, and the other to Huntsville. Just as he 
was turning into the Decatur road, he saw a 
wagon-train coming in from Huntsville and de- 
cided that here was a chance for his promised 
Yankee trick. He rode up to the first wagon. 

" Drive that wagon up close to the fence and 
halt," he said. 

"How long since you've been wagon-master?" 
said the driver, cracking his whip. 

" Ever since you left your musket lying in the 
bottom of the wagon," said Pike, leveling his re- 
volver at the man's head. He drove his wagon 
up and halted it without a word and stood with 
his arms over his head as ordered by Pike 

One by one the other wagons came up and the 
drivers assumed the same attitude. Last of all 
there was a rattle of hoofs and the wagon-master, 
who had been lingering in the rear, galloped up. 

"What the devil are you fellows stopping for?" 
he shouted, but as he came around the last wagon, 



THE LONE SCOUT 193 

he almost ran his head into Pike's revolver and 
immediately assumed the same graceful attitude 
as the others. Pike rode up to each wagon, col- 
lected all the muskets, not forgetting to remove a 
couple of revolvers from the belt of the wagon- 
master and then inquired from the latter what the 
wagons had in them. 

" Provender," said the wagon-master, surlily. 

"What else?" said the corporal, squinting 
along the barrel of his revolver. 

" Bacon," yelled the wagon-master much 
alarmed ; " four thousand pounds in each wagon." 

*' Well," said the corporal, " I've always been 
told that raw bacon is an unhealthy thing to eat 
and so you just unhitch your mules and set fire to 
these wagons and be mighty blamed quick about 
it too, because I have a number of engagements 
down the road." The men grumbled, but there 
was no help for them and in a few minutes every 
wagon was burning and crackling and giving out 
dense black smoke. Waiting until it was impos- 
sible to put them out, the corporal lined the men 
up across the road. 

" Now you fellows get on your marks and when 
I count three you start back to Fayetteville and if 



194 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

you are in reach by the time I have counted one 
hundred, there's going to be some nice round holes 
in the backs of your uniforms. When you get 
back to the village tell them that this is the Yankee 
trick that I promised them." 

Before Pike had counted twenty-five there was 
not a man in sight. He at once turned back and 
raced down the road toward Decatur. He had 
gone about ten miles when he came to a small 
country church and as it was Sunday, it was open 
and nearly filled. Fearing that there might be a 
number of armed Confederate soldiers in the 
church who would start out in pursuit as soon as 
the word came back from Fayetteville, the corporal 
decided to investigate. Not wishing to dismount 
he rode Bill up the steps and through the open 
door and down the main aisle, just as the minister 
was announcing a hymn. 

" Excuse this interruption," said Pike, as the 
minister's voice quavered off into silence, " but I 
notice a number of soldierly-looking men here and 
I will take it as a great favor if they will hold their 
hands as high above their heads as possible and 
come down here and have a talk with me." 

As this simple request was accompanied by a 



THE LONE SCOUT 195 

revolver aimed at the audience, one by one six 
soldiers who had been attending the service came 
sheepishly down the aisle. They looked so funny 
straining their arms over their heads that some of 
the girls in the audience unkindly burst out 
laughing. Pike removed a revolver from each 
one and dumped his captured arms into one of 
his saddle-bags. 

" Now, parson," he said, " I want to hear a 
good, fervent prayer from you for the President 
of the United States." The minister hesitated. 
" Quick and loud," said Pike, " because I'm going 
in a minute." 

There was no help for it and the minister 
prayed for President Lincoln by name, while Pike 
reverently removed his cap. Then backing his 
horse out of the door, he started on toward De- 
catur. Not a half mile from the church he met 
two Confederate soldiers who were leisurely riding 
to the church. There was no reason at all why 
the corporal should meddle with these men. 
They were two to one and he had no way of dis- 
posing of them even if he made them captives. 
However, the sight of the Confederate parson 
praying for Abe Lincoln had tickled Pike and he 



196 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

made up his mind to have some fun with these 
soldiers. As he came abreast of them he whipped 
out his revolver, ordered them to halt and to give 
their names, regiments and companies. They did 
so with great alacrity. 

" Well, gentlemen," he said, " you are my 
prisoners and I am very sorry for I am so far out- 
side of my lines that 1 am afraid there is only one 
way to safely dispose of you." 

"Great heavens, man," said one, "you don't 
mean to shoot us down." 

"I'm sorry," said Pike, "but you can see for 
yourself that that's the only thing to do. You 
are Rebel soldiers and to leave you alive would 
mean that you will keep on doing harm to the 
Union forces." 

" Don't shoot, captain," both of them chorused ; 
" we'll take the oath of allegiance." 

Pike seemed to hesitate. 

" Well," he said finally, " I hate to kill men on 
Sunday. I suppose I ought not to do this, but if 
you'll solemnly swear allegiance to the United 
States of America and that you'll never hereafter 
serve against the Union or be late to church 
again, I'll let you go." 



THE LONE SCOUT 197 

With much solemnity, the Confederates took the 
oath in the form dictated, delivered up their re- 
volvers and rode away. 

The next man that Pike encountered was an old 
gentleman on his way to Fayetteville, who ad- 
mitted that he was a judge and the next day 
was intending to serve in a number of political 
cases involving the property of certain Union 
sympathizers. Pike made him also take the oath 
of allegiance, and promise not to enter judgment 
contrary to the interests of the Union. He then 
left the road and rode along a shallow creek 
through the woods. About sunset he suddenly 
came upon an old man under the trees. He 
questioned him and found that he was a Union 
sympathizer and was told by him that there were 
twelve Tennessee cavalrymen and fifteen mounted 
citizens on the lookout for him. 

"That is," said the old man, "if you're the chap 
that has been going around capturing wagon- 
trains and churches and soldiers and judges." 

•' That's me," said Pike. 

The old man took him home and fed him and 
with him he left his horse and started out on foot, 
feeling that the hue and cry would now be out all 



198 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

over the country against a mounted man in Union 
uniform. Leaving his friend, he followed the path 
through the woods toward Decatur until it was 
dark and then wrapped himself up in a blanket 
and slept all night in the pouring rain. In the 
morning he made his way toward the railway and 
followed it until about ten o'clock when he stopped 
at a house and bought a breakfast. He had not 
been there long before he was joined by several 
Confederate cavalrymen. 

" What's your business," said one, " and what 
are you doing in that uniform ? " 

" Well," said Pike, " I was told to wear it and 
not to tell any one my business until it was done 
and if you fellows don't like it, you had better take 
it up with the general." 

Once again the Confederates concluded that he 
was on some secret mission. They insisted, how- 
ever, on taking him to camp with them and there 
he stayed two days and nights, incidentally ob- 
taining all the information possible as to the forces 
and the guard about the bridge. Just before dawn 
on the second morning, he managed to give them 
the slip and started across country, wading and 
swimming and toiling through one swamp after 



THE LONE SCOUT 199 

another until he finally reached the river bank, 
traveling only by night and sleeping by day. 
Along this bank he went for miles until finally he 
found concealed in a little creek a small rowboat 
which was tied to a tree and in which were two 
oars. He spent the better part of the day in load- 
ing this up with pine knots and bits of dry drift- 
wood which he planned to use in firing the bridge. 
Just at evening he pushed off into the middle 
of the river and started again down for the 
bridge. He had found by his inquiries that the 
Confederate camp was located on a bank some 
distance from the bridge, as no one expected any 
attack there so far within the Confederate lines. 
All night long he tugged at the oars and aided 
by the current reached the bridge about three 
o'clock in the morning. The bridge was an old- 
fashioned one erected on three piers. Pike made 
a careful survey of the whole length of the bridge 
from the river and found it absolutely unguarded 
although he could hear the sentry call on the hill 
a quarter of a mile away where the troops were 
encamped by the town. Concealing his skiff un- 
der an overhanging tree, he toiled up to the 
bridge with armful after armful of fire-wood. At 



200 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

each end and in the middle he made a little heap 
of fat-wood and pine knots with a strip of birch- 
bark, which burns like oiled paper, underneath 
each. Starting from the far end, he lit the first 
two piles and by the time he had crossed and was 
working on the last, he could hear the flames 
roaring behind him as they caught the dry 
weather-beaten planking of the bridge. And 
now he made a mistake which was to prove well- 
nigh fatal to him. As soon as the fire had ob- 
tained a headway, he should have instantly stolen 
back up the river in his skiff. In his anxiety to 
make a thorough job of it he stayed too long, 
forgetting that in the bright light of the fire every 
motion he made would be plainly visible from the 
hilltop. Suddenly he heard the alarm given from 
the camp and almost instantly it was followed by 
the wail of a minie ball as the sentry above fired 
down upon him. By this time the river was as 
bright as day for a quarter of a mile on both sides 
of the bridge. Near the Confederate camp were 
a number of boats and Pike was already nearly 
exhausted by his long row and his work in firing 
the bridge. He heard the shouts of men as they 
dashed down for their boats. If he attempted to 



THE LONE SCOUT 201 

escape by water he was certain to be over- 
taken. Another bullet close to his head decided 
him and he dashed down from the bridge into 
the road, and plunged into the thick woods on 
the farther side. All the rest of that night and 
through the first part of the next day he traveled, 
following one path after another and keeping his 
general direction by a pocket compass. By noon 
he was so tired that if it had been to save his life 
he could not have gone any farther. The little 
stock of provisions which he had carried with him 
had been exhausted the night before and he threw 
himself on a bed of dry pine-needles under a long- 
leafed pine which stood on the top of a little knoll 
and lay there for nearly an hour until part of his 
strength came back. The first thing to do was to 
find something to eat. Pike did not dare shoot 
anything with his revolver, even if there had been 
anything to shoot, for fear of attracting the atten- 
tion of Confederate pursuers or bushwhackers. It 
was now that the corporal's wood-craft proved to 
be as valuable as his scout-craft. If he were to 
go further, he must have food and he commenced 
to wander back and forth through the woods, his 
quick eye taking in everything on the ground or 



202 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

among the trees. On the other side of the knoll 
where he had been lying, he noticed a rotten log 
where the dry, punky wood had been scattered as 
if a hen had been scratching there. Pike com- 
menced to look carefully all along the ground 
and finally just on the edge of the slope where 
the thick underbrush began, he nearly stepped on 
a large brown speckled bird so much the color of 
the leaves that if he had not been looking for it, 
he never would have discovered the nest. The 
bird slipped into the underbrush like a shadow, 
leaving behind fifteen brown, mottled partridge 
eggs. The corporal sat down over the nest and 
gulped down, one after the other, those eggs, warm 
from the breast of the brooding bird. As he said 
afterward, never had he tasted anything half so 
good. This was a step in the right direction, but 
even fifteen partridge eggs are not enough for a 
man who hadn't eaten for nearly thirty hours. 
Once again he began to prowl restlessly through 
the woods and this time his attention was at- 
tracted by something growing on the side of a 
dead maple stub. It was dark red and looked 
like a great tongue sticking out from the bark. 
To his great joy. Pike recognized it at once as 



THE LONE SCOUT 203 

the beefsteak mushroom. It was a magnificent 
specimen which must have weighed nearly two 
pounds and as he pulled it off from the tree, red 
drops oozed out and it looked and smelled like 
a big, fresh beefsteak. The corporal went down 
the hollow into the thickest part of the swamp and 
there picked an armful of perfectly dry cedar and 
scrub-oak twigs which burn with a clear, smoke- 
less flame. Out of these he built a little Indian 
cooking fire by arranging the twigs into the form 
of a little tepee so that a jet of clear flame came 
up with hardly a sign of any smoke. It was the 
work of only a moment to whittle and set up a 
forked stick and to fasten a slab of that meaty- 
looking fungus on a spit fixed in the fork. Fortu- 
nately he had left in his haversack a little salt and 
pepper with which he seasoned the broiling, hiss- 
ing steak. In about ten minutes it was done to a 
turn. Cutting a long strip of bark from off one of 
the red river-birches which grew near, Pike squat- 
ted down on the ground and in fifteen minutes 
more there was nothing left of that savory, two- 
pound, broiled vegetable steak. With fifteen eggs 
and two pounds of beefsteak mushroom under 
his belt, the corporal felt like another man. He 



204 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

coiled himself up on the dry pine-needles in a lit- 
tle hollow which he found under the low-hanging 
boughs of a long-leaf pine and resolved to take a 
sleep to make up for what he had lost during the 
last two nights. It was early afternoon and every- 
thing was still and hot and the drowsy scent of 
the pine mingled with puffs of spicy fragrance 
from the great white blossoms of the magnolia 
with which the woods were starred. As he fell 
asleep the last thing the corporal heard was the 
drowsy call of flocks of golden-winged warblers 
on their way north. How long he slept he could 
not tell. He only knew that he awoke with 
a sudden consciousness of danger, that strange 
sixth sense which most Indians and a few white 
hunters sometimes develop. Perhaps he inher- 
ited it from old Zebulon Pike who, like Daniel 
Boone and Kit Carson, had the power of hearing 
and sensing the approach of an enemy even 
in their soundest sleep. The corporal was alert 
the second he opened his eyes, but made not a 
movement or a rustle. The sun was well down 
in the sky and there was nothing in sight, but the 
birds had stopped singing. Finally way down 
through the little tunnel which a near-by flowing 



THE LONE SCOUT 205 

stream had made through the hillocks came a 
sound which brought him to his feet in an instant. 
It was a ringing note that chimed like a distant 
bell. Three times it sounded and there was 
silence, then again three times, but a little nearer 
and louder, then again silence. A third time it 
came and this time it seemed around the bend of 
the bayou not half a mile away. Pike knew in a 
minute what it was. It was the bay of the dreaded 
bloodhounds, those man-hunters who had learned 
to trail their prey through forest and fen, no matter 
how much he doubled nor how fast he ran. There 
was but one thing to do if there was time. Spring- 
ing up, the corporal ran down to the little stream 
and leaped in. It was hardly up to his knees, but 
he splashed along for a hundred yards, now and 
then plunging in up to his waist. It ran a hundred 
yards or so through the swamp and then emptied 
into a larger bayou. Along this Pike swam for 
his life as silently as a muskrat, for now he could 
hear the baying of the dogs close at hand and 
suddenly there was a chorus of deep raging barks 
followed by shouts and he knew that his pursuers 
had found his lair under the pine trees. Soon the 
stream ran into another one and then another 



2o6 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

until Pike had swam and waded and plunged 
through half a score of brooks which made a 
regular network through the middle of the swamp. 
By this time the sound of the dogs had died far 
away in the distance and he had every reason to 
believe that he had thrown them off the track. 
Down the last stream there was a deep, sluggish 
creek nearly fifty feet wide. He swam until he 
could go no farther. It opened out into a series 
of swampy meadows and to his joy he saw in the 
very midst of the swamp through which it ran a 
pile of newly-split rails. Swimming over to this 
he found that they had been piled on a little island 
about five feet above the level of the swamp and 
surrounded on all sides by masses of underbrush 
and deep sluggish water. By this time it was 
nearly sunset and he resolved to crawl up here 
and find a dry place and spend the night on this 
island, which could not be approached except by 
boat. As he climbed up to the top of the mass 
of rails, he heard a low, thick hiss close to his 
face and outstretched hand. He had never heard 
the sound before, but no man born needs to be 
taught the voice of the serpent. He started back 
just in time. Coiled on one of the rails was a 



THE LONE SCOUT 207 

great cotton-mouth moccasin whose bloated 
swollen body must have been nearly five feet in 
length and as big around as his arm. The great 
creature slowly opened its mouth, showing the 
pure white lining which has given it the name 
and hissed again menacingly. The corporal was 
in a predicament. Behind him was the cold, dark 
river in which he no longer had the strength to 
swim. In the approaching darkness, he might 
not be able to find any other island of refuge on 
which to pass the night. There was nothing for 
him but to fight the grim snake for the possession 
of the rails. He dropped back and twisted off the 
thick branch of a near-by willow-tree and began 
again to climb up toward the snake cautiously, 
but as rapidly as possible, for the light was begin- 
ning to die out in the sky and Pike preferred not 
to do his fighting in the dark in this case if pos- 
sible. As he reached the top of the pile, the king 
of the island was ready for him and struck 
viciously at him as he approached. The movable 
poison fangs protruded like poisoned spear-heads 
from the wide-open mouth and from them could 
be seen oozing the yellow drops of the fatal venom 
which makes the cotton-mouth more dreaded even 



2o8 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

than the rattler or the copperhead. The fatal head 
flashed out not six inches from Corporal Pike's 
face, but it had miscalculated the distance and be- 
fore it could again coil, he had struck with all his 
might at the monstrous body just where it joined 
the heart-shaped head. Fortunately for him, his 
aim was good and the crippled snake writhed 
and hissed and struck in vain in a horrible mass 
at Pike's feet. Two more blows made it harmless 
and inserting the stick under the heavy body, the 
corporal heaved it far over into the water and it 
floated away. Pike then made a careful exami- 
nation of the rails and the island on which he 
stood so as to make sure that the moccasin had 
not left any of his family behind. He found no 
others, however, and before it was dark the cor- 
poral moved the rails and piled them around him 
in a kind of barricade which shut him off from 
view from the water and shore and which he sin- 
cerely hoped would discourage the visits of any 
more moccasins. Inside of this he laid three rails 
lengthwise and wrung out his sodden coat and 
coiled up for the night on his hard bed. He woke 
up surrounded by the gleaming mist of the early 
morning and shaking with the cold after sleeping 



THE LONE SCOUT 209 

all night in his soaked clothing. As he was too 
cold to sleep and it was light enough now to see, 
he decided to start off for dry land again. For 
over two hours he swam and waded along big 
and little bayous until, just as the sun was getting 
up, he came out through the morass and found 
himself at the rear of a lonely plantation. Just 
in front of him an old negro was at work hoe- 
ing in a field. The corporal crept up near him 
through the bushes and looked all around cau- 
tiously to see whether there were any white men 
in sight. Seeing none, he decided to take a. 
chance on the negro being friendly. 

" Hi, there, uncle ! " he called cautiously from 
behind a little bush. 

The old man jumped a foot in the air. 

"That settles it," he observed emphatically to 
himself, " I'se gwine home. This old nigger ain't 
gwine to work in any swamp whar he hears hants 
callin' him ' uncle.' " 

At this point the corporal came out of his hid- 
ing place and finally managed to convince the old 
man that he was nothing worse than very hungry 
flesh and blood. The old darkey turned out to be 
a friend indeed and going to his cabin in less than 



2IO BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

fifteen minutes he was back with a big pan full of 
bacon and corn bread which the corporal emptied 
in record-breaking time. Moreover, he brought 
his son with him who promised to guide Pike 
by safe paths to the road which led to Huntsville 
where General Mitchel had located his headquar- 
ters. Hour after hour the two wound in and out of 
swamps which would have been impassable to any 
one who did not know the hidden trails which 
crossed them. Twice they heard Confederate 
soldiers, evidently still hunting for the Union 
soldier who had been making them so much 
trouble. Toward noon they came to a broad 
bayou which went in and out through the swamp. 
At one point where it approached the bend it be- 
came very narrow and Pike's guide showed him a 
fallen tree half hidden in the brush. 

" Cross that, boss," he said, "and at the other 
end you'll find a litde hard path. Follow that and 
you'll come out clear down on the Huntsville road, 
only a few miles from the Union soldiers." 

Pike said good-bye to his faithful guide and 
gave him one of the numerous Confederate re- 
volvers which he had captured on his trip as the 
only payment he could make for his kindness. 



THE LONE SCOUT 211 

The corporal found the path all right and was soon 
wearily trudging along the Huntsville road. He 
had not gone far before he was overtaken by another 
negro dressed in a style which would have made the 
lilies of the field take to the woods. With his pan- 
ama hat, red tie and checked suit, he made a brave 
show. What impressed the corporal, however, more 
than his clothes was the fact that he was driving a 
magnificent horse attached to a brand-new buggy. 

*' Stop a minute," said Pike, stepping out into 
the road. 

" No," said the negro, pompously, " I'se in a 
great hurry." 

The corporal whipped out a revolver and 
cocked it. 

** Come to think of it, Massa," said the darkey 
in quite a different tone, " Tse got plenty of time 
after all." 

" Whose horse is this ? " said the corporal, 
climbing into the buggy. 

" This is Mistah Pomeroy's property," said the 
negro with much dignity. 

*' Well," said the corporal, " you turn right 
around and drive me to General Mitchel's camp 
just as fast as the law will let you." 



212 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

" But, boss," objected the other, " Massa will 
whip me if I do." 

'• And I'll shoot you if you don't," returned the 
corporal. 

This last argument was a convincing one and 
half an hour later General Mitchel and his forces 
were enormously impressed by seeing Corporal 
Pike, who had been reported shot, drive up back 
of a magnificent horse in a new buggy and beside 
a wonderfully-dressed coachman. The general 
was even more impressed when the corporal re- 
ported that the bridge was gone and gave him an 
accurate statement as to the Confederate forces. 

Corporal Pike found Mr. Pomeroy's horse a very 
good substitute for his faithful Bill and, to his sur- 
prise, the coachman went with the horse, since 
he was afraid to go back, and became a cook in 
General Mitchel's mess. 



CHAPTER XI 
Running the Gauntlet 



CHAPTER XI 

RUNNING THE GAUNTLET 

In the old days of the Indian wars a favorite 
amusement of a raiding party was to make their 
captives run the gauntlet. On their return home 
two long lines of not only the warriors, but even 
of the women and children would be formed 
armed with clubs, arrows, tomahawks and whips. 
The unfortunate captive was stationed at one end 
of this aisle of enemies and given the choice of 
being burned at the stake or of running for his 
life between the lines from one end to the other. 
Sometimes a swift runner and dodger escaped 
enough of the blows to stagger blinded with 
blood from a score of wounds, but still alive, 
across the line which marked the end of this grim 
race against death. It was always a desperate 
chance. Only the certainty of death if it were not 
taken ever caused any man to enter such a terrible 
competition. There is no record of even the most 
hardened Indian fighter ever running the gauntlet 
for any life save his own. 



2i6 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

In the summer of 1863, three men ran the 
gauntlet of shot and shell and rifle-fire for forty 
miles to save an army, with death dogging 
them all the way. Brigadier-General Thomas, 
who afterward earned the title of the Rock of 
Chickamauga by his brave stand in that disastrous 
battle, was entrenched on one of the spurs of the 
hills around Chattanooga. General Bragg with a 
much superior army of Confederates had hunted 
the Union soldiers mile after mile. At times they 
had stopped and fought, at times they had escaped 
by desperate marches. Now exhausted and 
ringed about by the whole Confederate Army, they 
must soon have help or be starved into surrender. 
Yet only forty miles to the eastward was a body 
of thirty thousand men commanded by General 
Stockton. This general was one of those valuable 
men who obey orders without any reasoning about 
the why and the wherefore of the same. He had 
been commanded to hold a certain pass in the 
mountains until further orders and that pass he 
would hold, as General Thomas well knew, until 
relieved or directed to do otherwise. If only the 
duty had been assigned to some other officer, it 
might be that not hearing anything from the 



RUNNING THE GAUNTLET 217 

main body, he would send out a reconnoitering 
party. Not so with General Stockton. That 
general would stay put and only a direct order or 
an overpowering force of the enemy would move 
him. 

It was in vain that General Thomas tried to get 
a messenger through with secret despatches in 
cipher. General Bragg knew that he had the 
Union Army cornered and he had stationed a triple 
row of pickets who caught or shot every man that 
General Thomas sent. 

Supplies and ammunition were both running 
low and General Thomas was considering massing 
a force of men on some point in the line in an at- 
tempt to break through far enough for a mes- 
senger to escape. This meant a great loss of life 
and probably would not be successful as the mes- 
senger would almost certainly be captured by an 
outer ring of scouts which Bragg would throw out 
as soon as he realized what was going on. There 
was only one other chance. The Confederates 
were so sure of their own strength, and that they 
would eventually capture the whole army, that 
they had not destroyed the railroad line which 
ran between the two Federal camps, hoping to use 



2i8 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

the same for shipping soldiers, prisoners and cap- 
tured suppHes later on. Both sides of the track, 
however, were lined with guards and covered by 
a number of Confederate batteries. General 
Thomas decided to make the attempt and called 
for volunteers who were willing to run this forty- 
mile gauntlet between the Confederate lines and 
batteries. Two old railroad men offered their 
services as engineer and fireman and they were 
accompanied by an adjutant who was to be the 
bearer of the despatches. There seemed to be 
only one chance in a thousand for this engine to 
get safely through and the men themselves, if they 
were not shot in their flight or wrecked with the 
engine, stood a good chance of being captured 
and hung as spies. In fact it seemed such a hope- 
less chance that at the last moment General 
Thomas was on the point of countermanding the 
order when one of the men themselves gave the 
best argument in favor of the plan. 

" It's worth trying, General," said he, " for even 
if we fail, you only lose three men. The other 
way you would have to throw away at least a 
thousand before you could find out whether it was 
possible to cut through the lines or not." 



RUNNING THE GAUNTLET 219 

It was decided to make the trial and a dark, 
moonless night when the sky was covered with 
heavy clouds was selected as the best time for 
starting. The men shook hands with their com- 
rades and each left with his best friend a letter to 
be sent to his family if he were not heard from 
within a given time. There were but few engines 
in the Union ranks and none of them were very 
good as the Confederates had captured the most 
powerful. However, the ex-engineer and fireman 
picked out the one which seemed to be in best re- 
pair, put in an extra supply of oil to allow for the 
racking strain on the machinery and filled up the 
tender with all the fuel that it could carry. At 
half-past ten they started after firing up with the 
utmost care and in half a mile they were running 
at full speed when suddenly there was the sharp 
crack of a rifle and a minie bullet whined past the 
panting, jumping, rushing engine. Another one 
crashed through the window of the caboose, but 
fortunately struck no one. By this time the little 
engine was going at her utmost speed. At times 
all four of the wheels seemed to leave the track at 
once, she jumped so under the tremendous head 
of steam which the fireman, working as he had 



220 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

never done before, had raised. The engine 
swayed so from side to side as it ran that it was 
all that the adjutant could do to keep his feet. 
Finally they reached the first battery. Fortunately 
it had miscalculated the tremendous speed of the 
engine. A series of guns stationed close to the 
track hurled a shower of grape and solid shot at 
the escaping engine. It cut the framework of the 
caboose almost to pieces, but fortunately not a 
shot struck any vital part of the machinery or in- 
jured any of the three men. As they whirled on, 
the last gun of all sent a solid shot after them 
which struck the bell full and fair and with a last 
tremendous clang it was dashed into the bushes by 
the side of the road. All along the track there 
was a fusillade of musket-fire and bullets whizzed 
around them constantly, but none struck any of 
the crew. The next danger-point was at a junc- 
tion with this road and another which ran off at 
right angles. This junction was protected by no 
less than two batteries and furthermore on the 
junction-track was an engine standing with smoke 
coming out of her smoke-stack showing that she 
was fired up ready for pursuit. It seemed abso- 
lutely impossible to escape these two batteries. 



RUNNING THE GAUNTLET 221 

Already they could see lanterns hurrying to and 
fro on both sides of the track where the guns were 
trained so close that they simply could not fail to 
dash the engine into a hissing, bloody, glowing 
scrap-heap of crumpled steel and iron. The men 
set their teeth and prepared for the crash which 
every one of them felt meant death. It never 
came. By some oversight, no alarm had been 
given and before the guns could be manned and 
sighted, the engine was whirling along right be- 
tween both batteries, a cloud of sparks and a col- 
umn of fire rushing two feet above her smoke- 
stack. The Confederates succeeded in only turn- 
ing one gun and training it on the little engine 
fast disappearing in the darkness. The gunner, 
however, who fired that gun came nearer putting 
an end to the expedition than all the others. He 
dropped a shell in the air directly over them. It 
shattered the roof of the caboose, wounded the 
fireman and blew out both windows, but almost by 
a miracle left the machinery still uninjured. The 
adjutant laid the fireman on the jumping, bound- 
ing floor of the cab and under his faint instructions 
fired the engine in his place. As he was heap- 
ing coal into the open fire-box with all his might, 



222 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

there came a deep groan from the wounded fire- 
man. 

" Try and bear the pain, old man," shouted the 
engineer over the roar of the engine. " We'll be 
safe in a few minutes if nothing happens." 

" Something's goin' to happen," gasped the 
fireman. " Listen ! " 

Far back over the track came a pounding and 
a pushing. The engineer shook his head. 

" They're after us," he said to the adjutant, 
•' and what's more they're bound to get us unless 
we can throw them of! the track." 

" Can't we win through with this start ? " said 
the captain. 

" No, sir," said the engineer, " they've got an 
engine that can do ten miles an hour better than 
this one and beside that, they've got a car to 
steady her. I don't dare give this old girl one 
ounce more of steam or she'd jump the tracks." 

Before long far back around the curve came the 
head-light of the pursuing engine like the fierce 
eye of some insatiable monster on the track of its 
prey. Steadily she gained. Once when they ap- 
proached the long trestlework which ran for 
nearly a mile, the sound of the pursuit slackened 



RUNNING THE GAUNTLET 223 

off as the lighter engine took the trestle at a speed 
which the heavier one did not dare to use. Bul- 
let after bullet whizzed past the escaping engine 
as the soldiers in the cab of her pursuer fired again 
and again. Both engines, however, were sway- 
ing too much to allow for any certain aim. 
Finally one lucky shot smashed the clock in the 
front engine close by the engineer's head, spray- 
ing glass and splinters all over him. Now the 
front engine had only ten miles to go before she 
would be near enough to General Stockton's lines 
to be in safety. The rear engine, however, was 
less than a quarter of a mile away and gaining at 
every yard. 

" How about dropping some of the fire-bars on 
the tracks ?" suggested the captain. " We've got 
enough coal on to carry her the next ten miles. 
We shan't need the fire-bars after we get through 
and we certainly won't need them if they capture 
us." 

It seemed a good idea and the wounded fire- 
man dragged himself to the throttle and took the 
engineer's place for a moment while he and the 
captain climbed out upon the truck and carefully 
dropped one after the other of the long, heavy 



224 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

steel rods across the track. Then they listened, 
hoping to hear the crash of a derailed engine. It 
never came. Instead there was a loud clanging 
noise followed by a crackling of the underbrush 
and repeated again as the pursuing engine struck 
each bar with its cow-catcher and dashed it off 
the rails. The captain suddenly commenced to 
unbutton and tear ofl his long, heavy army over- 
coat. 

" How about putting this in the middle of the 
track on the chance that it may entangle the 
wheels ? " he suggested. 

In a minute the engineer clambered out on the 
truck. 

" If only it gets wedged in the piston-bar, it may 
take half an hour to get it out," he panted as he 
climbed back into the cab. 

Suddenly from behind they heard a heavy 
jolting noise and then the sound of escaping 
steam. 

" We got her," shouted the engineer and the 
captain to the wounded fireman whose face looked 
ghastly white against the red light of the open 
fire-box. The engineer and the captain shook 
hands and decided to do a little war-dance without 



RUNNING THE GAUNTLET 225 

much success on the swaying floor of the cab, but 
they were suddenly stopped by a whisper from the 
fireman. 

'• They've got it out," he said. Sure enough 
once more there came the thunder of approaching 
wheels and the start which they had gained was 
soon cut down again. The heavy engine came 
more and more rapidly on them as the fire died 
down, although the captain tried to stir up the 
flagging flames with his sword in place of the lost 
fire-iron. Only a mile ahead they could see the 
lights which showed where the Union lines lay. 
Before them was a heavy up-grade and it was 
certain that the Confederate engine would catch 
them there just on the edge of safety. In a min- 
ute or so the men crowded into the cab of the 
engine behind to be close enough to pick ofT the 
fugitives at their leisure. The three men stared 
blankl)'' ahead. Suddenly the dull, despairing 
look on the engineer's face was replaced by a 
broad grin. Entirely forgetting military etiquette, 
he slapped his superior officer on the back and said : 

" Captain, come out to the tender with me and 
I'll show you a stunt that will save our lives if you 
will do just what I tell you." 



226 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

The captain obeyed meekly while the wounded 
fireman stared at his friend under the impression 
that he was losing his mind under the strain. 
The engineer took one of the large oil-cans with a 
long nozzle and then wrapping his two brawny 
arms tightly around the captain's waist, lowered 
him as far as he could from the tender and 
directed him to pour the oil directly on each rail 
without wasting a drop or allowing a foot to go 
unoiled. It was hard in the dark to see the rail 
or to keep one's balance on the bounding engine, 
but the captain was alight weight and the engineer 
let him down as far back from the tender as he 
dared and held him there until one rail was 
thoroughly oiled. He repeated the operation on 
the other side and the two once more came back 
to the fireman who was clinging limply to the 
throttle. 

" Now," said the engineer, " keep your eye 
open and you'll see some fun." 

The front engine puffed more and more slowly 
up the grade and the pursuing engine seemed to 
gain on them at every yard. Already the men in 
the cab were commencing to aim their rifles for the 
last fatal volley. At this moment the front wheels 



RUNNING THE GAUNTLET 227 

of the pursuing engine reached the oiled track and 
in a minute her speed slackened, the wheels whirled 
round and round at a tremendous speed and 
there was a sudden rush and hiss of escaping 
steam. The engine in front suddenly drew away 
from her anchored pursuer. The engineer took a 
last long look at them through his field-glasses. 

"It seems to me, captain," said he, "as if they 
are cussin' considerable. Her old wheels are 
spinnin' like a squirrel-cage." 

The engine dashed on more and more slowly, 
but there was no need for haste. In a few min- 
utes a shot was fired in front of them and a sentry 
shouted for them to halt. They were within the 
picket lines of the Union Army. The engine was 
stopped and the three men staggered out holding 
tightly the precious dispatches which they carried 
in triplicate and in a few minutes more they were 
in the presence of General Stockton. A force was 
at once sent out and the Confederates and their 
locomotive were captured and within an hour 
thirty thousand men were on their way to relieve 
the beset Union forces. 

The gauntlet had been run and General Thomas' 
army was saved. 



CHAPTER XII 
Forgotten Heroes 



CHAPTER XII 
FORGOTTEN HEROES 

" There was a little city and few men within it 
and there came a great king against it and be- 
sieged it and built great bulwarks against it. Now 
there was found in it a poor wise man and he by 
his wisdom delivered the city, yet no man remem- 
bered that same poor man." Thus wrote the 
great Solomon, hearing of a deed, the tale of 
which had come down through the centuries. 
The doer of the deed had been long forgotten. 

History is full of memories of brave deeds. The 
names of the men who did them have passed 
away. The deeds live on forever. Like a fleck 
of radium each deed is indestructible. It may be 
covered with the dust and debris of uncounted 
years, but from it pulsates and streams forever a 
current of example and impulse which never can 
be hidden, never be forgotten, but which may 
flash out ages later, fighting with a mysterious, 
hidden inner strength against the powers of fear 
and of wrong. 



232 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

The annals of the Civil War are full of records 
of forgotten doers of great deeds, humble, com- 
monplace men and women who suddenly flashed 
out in some great effort of duty and perhaps were 
never heard of again. Pray God that all of us when 
the time comes may burst if only for a moment into 
the fruition of accomplishment for which we were 
born and not wither away like the unprofitable fig- 
tree which only grew, but never bore fruit. 

In 1862, the battle-hospitals were crowded with 
wounded and dying men. The best surgeons of 
that day had not learned what every doctor knows 
now about the aseptic treatment of wounds and 
conducting of operations. Accordingly too often 
even slight wounds gangrened and a terrible per- 
centage of injured men died helplessly and hope- 
lessly. In the fall of that year the hospitals at 
Jefferson were in a fearful condition. Thousands 
and thousands of wounded and dying men were 
brought there for whom there were no beds. One 
poor fellow lay on the bare, wet boards, sick of a 
wasting fever. He was worn almost to a skeleton 
and on his poor, thin body were festering bed-sores 
which had come because there was no one who 
could give him proper attention. From his side 



FORGOTTEN HEROES 233 

he had seen five men one after the other brought 
in sick or wounded and carried away dead. One 
day an old blaclc washerwoman named Hannah 
stopped in the ward to hunt up a doctor for whom 
she was to do some work. She saw this patient 
lying on his side on a dirty blanket spread out on 
the boards unwashed and filthy beyond all de- 
scription with gaping sores showing on his wasted 
back. There he lay staring hopelessly at the body 
of a man who had recently died next to him and 
which the few overworked attendants had not had 
time to carry out to the dead-house. Old Hannah 
could not stand the sight. When she finally found 
the doctor she begged him to give her leave to 
take the man up and put him in her own bed. 

" It's no use, Hannah," said the doctor kindly, 
" the poor chap is dying. He will be gone to- 
morrow. I wish we could do something for him, 
but we can't and you can't." 

Hannah could not sleep that night thinking of 
the sick man. Bright and early the next morning 
she came down and found him still alive. That 
settled it in her mind. Without asking any one's 
permission, she went out, looked up her two strap- 
ping sons and made them leave their work and 



234 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

bring her bed down to the hospital. It was 
covered with coarse but clean linen sheets and she 
directed them while they lifted the sufferer on to 
the bed and carried him down to her shanty. 
There she cut away the filthy shirt which he wore 
and washed him like a baby with hot water. 
Then she settled down to nurse him back to life. 
Every half hour, night and day, she fed him 
spoonfuls of hot, nourishing soup. That and 
warm water and clean linen were the only medi- 
cines she used. For a week she did nothing else 
but nurse her soldier. Several times he sank and 
once she thought him dead, but he always rallied 
and single-handed old Hannah fought back death 
and slowly nursed him back to health. Finally 
when he was well, he was given a furlough to go 
back to his home in Indiana. He tried to persuade 
Hannah to go back with him. 

" No, honey," she said, " I'se got my washing 
to do and besides I'm goin' to try to adopt some 
more soldiers." 

She went with him to the steamboat, fixed him 
in a deck chair, as he was still too feeble to walk, 
and kissed him good-bye and when she left the 
man broke down and cried. Old Hannah went 



FORGOTTEN HEROES 235 

back to her shanty and did the same thing again 
and again until she had nursed back to life no less 
than six Union soldiers. As she was not in active 
service, the government never recognized her 
work and even her last name was never known, 
but six men and their families and their friends 
have handed down the story of what a poor, old, 
black washerwoman could and did do for her 
country and for the sick and helpless. 

The exploit of Lieutenant Blodgett and his 
orderly, Peter Basnett, was a brave deed of an- 
other kind. He had been sent by General 
Schofield during the engagement at Newtonia 
with orders to the colonel of the Fourth Missouri 
Cavalry. As the two rode around a point of 
woods, they suddenly found themselves facing 
forty Confederate soldiers drawn up in an irregular 
line not fifty yards away. There was no chance of 
escape, as they would be riddled with bullets at 
such a short range. Moreover neither the lieuten- 
ant nor his orderly thought well of surrendering. 
Without an instant's hesitation they at once drew 
their revolvers and charging down upon the Con- 
federates, shouted in loud, though rather shaky 
voices, " Surrender 1 Drop your arms ! Sur- 



236 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

render at once ! " The line wavered, feeling 
that two men would not have the audacity to 
charge them unless they were followed by an over- 
whelming force. As they came right up to the 
lines, eight of the men in front threw down their 
muskets. The rest hesitated a minute and then 
turned and broke for the woods and the lieutenant 
and his orderly rode on and delivered eight 
prisoners along with their orders. 

In the battle of Rappahannock Station, Colonel 
Edwards of the Fifth Maine showed the same 
nerve under similar circumstances. While his 
regiment were busy taking a whole brigade of 
captured Confederates to the rear, the colonel with 
a dozen of his men rode out into the darkness 
after more prisoners. Following the line of forti- 
fications down toward the river, he suddenly came 
out in front of a long line of Confederate troops 
lying entrenched in rifle-pits. Like Lieutenant 
Blodgett, he decided to make a brave bluff rather 
than be shot down or spend weary years in a Con- 
federate prison. Riding directly up to the nearest 
rifle-pit where a score of guns were leveled at him, 
he inquired for the officer who was in command 
of the Confederate forces. 



FORGOTTEN HEROES 237 

" I command here," said the Confederate colonel, 
rising from the middle pit, " and who are you, 
sir?" 

** My name is Colonel Edwards of the Fifth 
Maine, U. S. A.," replied the other, " and I call 
upon you to surrender your command at once." 

The Confederate colonel hesitated. 

" Let me confer with my officers first," he said. 

" No, sir," said Colonel Edwards, " I can't give 
you a minute. Your forces on the right have been 
captured, your retreat is cut ofT and unless you 
surrender at once, I shall be compelled to order 
my regiment," pointing impressively to the whole 
horizon, " to attack you without further delay. I 
don't wish to cause any more loss of life than 
possible." 

The Confederate colonel was convinced by his 
impressive actions and that there would be no use 
to resist. 

" I hope you will let me keep my sword, how- 
ever," he said. 

"Certainly," said Colonel Edwards, generously, 
" you can keep your sword, but your men must 
lay down their arms and pass to the rear imme- 
diately." 



238 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

The whole brigade including a squad of the fa- 
mous Louisiana Tigers were disarmed and marched 
to the rear as prisoners of war by Colonel Ed- 
wards and his twelve men. One of these men said 
afterward, " Colonel, I nearl}' lost that battle for 
you by laughing when you spoke about their 'sur- 
rendering to avoid loss of life.' " 

The most terrible missile in modern warfare is 
the explosive shell. Records show that the great- 
est loss of life occurs from artillery fire and not 
from rifle bullets. In the Civil War these shells 
were especially feared. The solid shot and the 
grape and the canister were bad enough, but 
when a great, smoking shell dropped into the 
midst of a regiment, the bravest men fled for 
shelter. The fuses were cut so that the shell 
would explode immediately on striking or a very 
few seconds afterward. The explosion would 
drive jagged fragments of iron and sometimes 
heated bullets through scores of men within a ra- 
dius of fully one hundred yards. No wounds were 
more feared or more fatal than the ghastly rips 
and tears made by the jagged, red-hot fragments 
of shells. The men became used to the hiss and 
the whistle of the solid shot and the whirling bul- 



FORGOTTEN HEROES 239 

lets, but when the scream of the hollow shell was 
heard through the air overhead, like the yell of 
some great, fatal, flying monster, every man 
within hearing tried to get under shelter. 

In 1864, the loist Ohio Infantry were fighting 
at Buzzards Roost, Georgia. Company H was 
drawn up along the banks of the stream there and 
one of the Confederate batteries had just got its 
range. Suddenly there came across the woods 
the long, fierce, wailing scream of one of the great 
shells and before the echo had died out it appeared 
over the tree tops and fell right in the midst of a 
hundred men, hissing and spitting fire. All the 
men but one scattered in every direction. Private 
Jacob F. Yaeger was on the edge of the group 
and could have secured his own safety by dodging 
behind a large tree which stood conveniently near. 
Just as he was about to do this he saw that some 
of the men had not had time enough to get away 
and were just scrambling up only a few feet from 
the spluttering shell. He acted on one of those 
quick, brave impulses which make heroes of men. 
Like a flash, he sprinted across the field, tearing 
off his coat as he ran, wrapped it round the hiss- 
ing, hot shell and started for the creek, clasping it 



240 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

tight against his breast. By this time the fuse had 
burned so far in that there was no opportunity to 
cut it below the spark. His only chance was to 
get it into the water before the spark reached the 
powder below. He reached the bank of the creek 
in about two jumps, but, as he said afterward, he 
seemed to hang in the air a half hour between 
each jump. Even as he reached the bank, he 
hurled the shell, coat and all, into the deep, slug- 
gish water and involuntarily ducked for the explo- 
sion which he was sure was going to come. It 
didn't. The water stopped the spark just in time 
and Private Yaeger had saved the lives of many 
of his comrades. 

Of all the prizes which are most valued in war 
the captured battle-flags of an enemy rank first. 
The flag is the symbol of an army's life. While 
it waves the army is living and undefeated. 
When the flag falls, or when it is captured, all is 
over. In battle the men rally around their colors 
and the flag stands for life or death. It must 
never be given up and the one who carries the flag 
has not only the most honorable but the most 
dangerous post in his company. Against the flag 
every charge is directed. The man who carries 



FORGOTTEN HEROES 241 

the flag knows that he is marked above all others 
for attack. The man who saves a flag from cap- 
ture saves his company or his regiment not only 
from defeat, but from disgrace. 

In the battle of Gettysburg, Corporal Nathaniel 
M. Allen of the First Massachusetts Infantry was 
the color-bearer of his company. On the 2d of 
July his regiment had been beaten back under the 
tremendous attacks of the Confederate forces. 
Their retreat became almost a rout as the men ran 
to escape the murderous fire which was being 
poured in upon them by concealed batteries of the 
enemy as well as from the muskets of the advanc- 
ing infantry. Corporal Allen stayed back in the 
rear and retreated slowly and reluctantly so as to 
give his company a chance to return and rally. 
Beyond and still farther back than he, marching 
grimly and doggedly from the enemy, was the 
color-bearer of his regiment carrying the regi- 
mental flag. Suddenly Allen saw him falter, stop, 
fling up his arms and fall headlong on the field 
tangled up in the flag which he was carrying. 
There came a tremendous yell from the advancing 
Confederate forces as they saw the flag go down. 
Allen stopped and for a moment hesitated. It was 



242 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

only his duty to carry and wave his own colors, 
but at that moment he saw a squad of gray- backs 
start out from the advancing Confederate forces 
and make a rush to capture the flag which lay flat 
and motionless in a widening pool of the color- 
bearer's blood. This was too much for Allen. 
With a yell of defiance he rushed back, heed- 
less of the bullets which hissed all around him, 
and rolling over the dead body of the man who 
had given his life for his colors he pulled the 
regimental flag from under his body, and started 
back for the distant Union forces. By this time 
the Confederates were close upon him, but his 
brave deed had not gone unnoticed. Seeing him 
coming across the stricken field with a flag in 
either hand, the rear-guard of his regiment turned 
back with a cheer and poured in a volley into the 
approaching Confederates which stopped them just 
long enough to let Allen escape and to carry back 
both the colors. 

" What's the matter with you fellows anyway," 
said Allen, as he reached the safety of the rear 
rank ; " do you think I'm going to do all the fight- 
ing?" 

A storm of cheers and laughter greeted this re- 



FORGOTTEN HEROES 243 

mark and the rear-guard stopped. Slowly the 
others, hearing the cheers, and stranger still, the 
laughing, came back to the colors and in a few 
minutes the line was again formed and this time 
the regiment held and drove back the attack of 
the Confederates. One man by doing more than 
his duty had changed a defeat into a victory. 

Sometimes in a batde a man becomes an in- 
voluntary hero. In some of Sienkiwictz's war- 
novels, he has a character named Zagloba who 
was constantly doing brave deeds in spite of him- 
self. In one battle he became caught in a charge 
and while struggling desperarely to get out, he 
tripped and fell on top of the standard-bearer of 
the other army who had just been killed. Zagloba 
found himself caught and entangled in the banner 
and finally, as the battle swept on, he emerged 
from the place in safety carrying the standard of 
the enemy and from that day forward was held as 
one of the heroes of the army. 

At the battle of Chancellors ville Major Clifford 
Thompson at Hazel Grove became an involuntary 
hero and did a much braver deed than he had 
intended, although, unlike Zagloba, he had shown 
no lack of courage throughout the battle. Gen- 



244 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

eral Pleasonton was forming a line of battle along 
the edge of the woods and was riding from gun to 
gun inspecting the line when suddenly not two 
hundred yards distant a body of men appeared 
marching toward them. He was about to give 
the order to fire when a sergeant called out to 
him : 

" Wait, General, I can see our colors in the line." 

The General hesitated a moment and then 

turning said, " Major Thompson, ride out and 

see who those people are and come back and tell 

me." 

As the major said afterward, he had absolutely 
no curiosity personally to find out anything about 
them and was perfectly willing to let them intro- 
duce themselves, but an order is an order, and he 
accordingly rode directly toward the approaching 
men. He could plainly see that they had Union 
colors, but could see no trace of any Union uni- 
forms. When he was only about forty yards 
distant, the whole line called out to him : 

" Come on in, we're friends ; don't be afraid." 
The major, however, had heard of too many 
men being made prisoners by pretended friends 
and accordingly rode along the front of the whole 



FORGOTTEN HEROES 245 

line in order to determine definitely tlie cliaracter 
of the approaching forces, fearing that the colors 
which he saw and which they kept waving 
toward him might have been Union colors 
captured from the Union forces the day before. 
Seeing that he did not come closer, one of the 
front rank suddenly fired directly at him and 
then with a tremendous Rebel yell the whole 
body charged down upon the Union forces. 
Thompson turned his horse to dash back to his 
own lines, but realized that, caught between two 
fires, he would evidently be shot either by his 
own troops or by the Rebels behind him. Dash- 
ing his spurs into his horse, he rode like the wind 
beween the two lines, hoping to get past them 
both before the final volley came. Fortunately 
for him both sides reserved their fire until they 
came to close quarters although he received a 
fusillade of scattered shots all along the line. Just 
as he rounded the ends, the lines came together 
with a crash and simultaneous volleys of mus- 
ketry. There were a few moments of hand-to- 
hand fighting, but the Union forces were too 
strong and the Confederate ranks broke and re- 
treated in scattering groups to the shelter of the 



246 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

woods beyond. The major reached the rear of 
his own lines just in time to help drive back the 
last rush of the Confederates. A few moments 
later he saw General Pleasonton sitting on his 
horse nearly in the same place where he had 
been when he had first sent him on his errand. 
Riding up to him, Major Thompson saluted. 

" General," he said, " those men were Confed- 
erates." 

" I strongly suspected it," said the General, 
** but, Major, I never expected to see you again, 
for when that charge came I figured out that if 
the Rebs didn't shoot you, we would. You did a 
very brave thing reconnoitering the enemies' 
front like that." 

" Well," said the major, " I am glad, General, 
that it impressed you that way. It was such a 
rapid reconnoiter that I was afraid that you might 
think it was a retreat." 

When Henry C. Foster, who afterward be- 
came famous as one of the heroes of Vicksburg, 
joined the Union Army, he was the rawest recruit 
in his regiment. His messmates still tell the 
story of how, before the regiment marched, he 



FORGOTTEN HEROES 247 

was visited by his mother who brought him an 
umbrella and a bottle of pennyroyal for use in 
wet weather and was horrified to find that 
soldiers are not allowed to carry umbrellas. 
Henry was impatient of the constant and never- 
ending drilling to which he was subjected. One 
day after a trying hour of setting-up exercises, he 
suddenly grounded his gun and said engagingly 
to the captain : 

" Say, Captain, let's stop this foolishness and go 
over to the grocery store and have a little game 
of cards." 

The captain stared at Foster for nearly a min- 
ute before he could get his breath, then he turned 
to a grinning sergeant and said : 

" Sergeant, you take charge of this young cab- 
bage-head after the regular drilling is over and 
drill him like blazes for about three extra hours," 
which the sergeant accordingly did. 

In spite of his greenness and his peculiarities, 
however, Henry had good stufi in him and the 
making of a brave soldier. He was known as a 
dead-shot and a good soldier, although still re- 
taining some of his peculiarities. Among others 
he insisted upon wearing a coonskin cap and 



248 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

was known throughout his company as " Old 
Coonskin." He soon showed such quaUties of 
courage and self-reliance that in spite of his 
early record he was gradually promoted until 
by the time his regiment reached Vicksburg, 
which the Union Army was then besieging, he 
was a second lieutenant. The siege of Vicks- 
burg was a long and tedious affair. The in- 
vesting forces did not have sufficient artillery to 
make such a breach in the defenses of the Con- 
federates that a successful attack could be made. 
The besiegers out in the wet and mud wearied of 
the slow process under which the encircling lines 
were brought closer and closer and longed for 
more active operations. Lieutenant Foster espe- 
cially, just as formerly he had protested against 
the interminable drilling, now chafed against the 
enforced inaction of the troops. Finally he made 
up his mind that he at least would get some in- 
terest out of the siege. As one of the best shots 
in his regiment, he had no difficulty in being de- 
tailed for sharp-shooting duty. One dark night, 
loaded with ammunition and with a haversack of 
provisions and several canteens of water, he 
crawled out into the space between the Union 



FORGOTTEN HEROES 249 

lines and the defender's ramparts. The next 
morning, to his comrades' intense surprise, they 
found that Old Coonskin had dug for himself a 
deep burrow like a woodchuck close to the 
enemy's defenses and had thrown up a little 
mound with a peep-hole. There he lay for three 
days picking ofi the Confederates and scoring 
each successful shot with a notch on the butt of 
the long rifle which he had obtained especial per- 
mission to use. At first the Confederates could 
not locate the direction from which the fatal shots 
kept coming. When they did discover Foster in 
his burrow, volley after volley was directed at his 
refuge, but he kept too close to be hit and at regu- 
lar intervals men who showed themselves on the 
ramparts were kept dropping before his unerring 
fire. At the end of the third day, the Confeder- 
ates had learned their lesson and there were no 
more shots to be had and once more Old Coon- 
skin began to be bored. It finally occurred to 
him that if he could in any way gain possession 
of a height which would allow him to shoot over 
the ramparts, he could make the Confederate 
position very uncomfortable. There was no tree 
or hill, however, near by which would lend itself 



250 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

to any such idea. Accordingly the third night 
Foster crawled back again to his regiment and 
spent a day in resting and reconnoitering and re- 
ceiving the congratulations of the whole regiment 
for his marksmanship and daring. The next 
night was dark and stormy. At daylight the 
sentries inside the city were amazed to see a rude 
structure standing close beside the fatal burrow. 
It was in the form of a log-cabin hastily built out 
of railroad ties and reinforced with heavy rail- 
road iron and containing peep-holes so that its 
occupant could shoot with entire safety. At first 
it did not seem to be any more dangerous than 
the burrow had been so long as the besieged kept 
ofE the breastwork. By the second day, however, 
it had grown visibly higher and the third night 
found it built up by slow degrees so that it began 
to look really like a low tower. Finally it reached 
such a height that from an upper inside shelf, pro- 
tected by heavy logs and planks, Old Coonskin 
could lie at his ease and overlook all of the opera- 
tions inside the city. Then began a reign of ter- 
ror for the besieged. They had no artillery and 
it was necessary to concentrate an incessant fire 
on the tower, otherwise the sharp-shooter within 



FORGOTTEN HEROES 251 

could pick off his men without difficulty. It was 
absolutely impossible for the besieged to keep un- 
der cover and still properly man the defenses 
against an attack. One by one the officers went 
down before Old Coonskin's deadly fire and it 
seemed to be only a question of time and ammu- 
nition before the whole garrison succumbed to his 
marksmanship. In the meantime, the besieging 
lines drew closer and closer and the never-ceasing 
artillery fire and incessant attacks gradually wore 
down the courage and the resources of the be- 
sieged. One day within an hour eleven men 
went down before the deadly aim of Old Coon- 
skin, most of them officers. Suddenly the firing 
ceased from the ramparts and slowly and reluc- 
tantly a white flag was hoisted, followed shortly 
by an envoy to the Union lines with a flag of 
truce. A tremendous cheer went up through the 
weary Union lines. Vicksburg had fallen, and to 
this day you never will be able to convince Old 
Coonskin's company that he was not the man who, 
along with Grant, brought about its surrender. 



CHAPTER XIII 
The Three Hundred Who Saved an Army 



CHAPTER XIII 

THE THREE HUNDRED WHO SAVED AN ARMY 

Twenty-three hundred and fifty years ago, 
three hundred men beat back an army of three 
millions of the Great King, as the King of Persia 
was rightly called. The kingdom of Xerxes, who 
then ruled over Persia, stretched from India to the 
^gean Sea and from the Caspian to the Red Sea. 
He reigned over Chaldean, Jew, Phoenician, 
Egyptian, Arab, Ethiopian and half a hundred 
other nations. From these he assembled an army, 
the greatest that has ever gone to war. This 
mass of men from all over the Eastern world he 
hurled at the tiny free states in Greece. It was as 
if the Czar of all the Russias with his vast armies 
from Europe and Asia should suddenly attack 
the state of Connecticut. 

Greece's best defense was the ring of rugged 
mountains which surrounded its seacoast. The 
Persian army had gathered at Sardis. From 
there to gain entrance into Greece they must 



256 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

follow a narrow path dose to the seashore with a 
precipice on one side and impassable morasses 
and quicksands on the other. Beyond this the 
way widened out into a little plain and narrowed 
again at the other end. It was an ideal place 
to be held by a small army of brave men. 
A Council of all the states of Greece was 
held at the Isthmus of Corinth. There all 
the states except one resolved to fight to the 
death for their freedom. Thessaly alone, which 
lay first in the path of the Great King, sent 
earth and water to his envoys who had come to 
all the states in Greece to demand submission. 
The Council sent to guard this pass, which was 
named Thermopylae, a little army of four thousand 
men. It was commanded by Leonidas, one of 
the two kings of Sparta, who led a little band of 
three hundred Spartans who had sworn never to 
retreat. Before they left Sparta, each man cele- 
brated his own funeral rites. This little army 
built a wall across the pass and camped there 
waiting for the enemy. Before long they were 
seen coming, covering the whole country with 
army after army until the plain below the pass was 
filled as far as the eye could see with hordes of 



THE THREE HUNDRED 257 

marching, shouting warriors. High on the moun- 
tainside a throne had been built for Xerxes where 
he could see and watch his armies sweep through 
the little force which stood in their way. His 
great nobles waited for the chance to display- 
before him their leadership and the splendid 
equipment and discipline of the armies which 
they led. The first attack was made by an army 
of the Persians and Medes themselves, supported 
by archers and slingers and flanked with cohorts 
of magnificently appareled horsemen mounted on 
Arab steeds. With a wild crash of barbaric 
music they rushed to the charge expecting by 
mere weight of numbers to break through the 
thin line of men who manned the little wall across 
the path, but the slave regiments of the Persians 
were made up of men who were trained under 
the lash. They were officered by great nobles 
who had led self-indulgent lives of luxury and 
pleasure. Against them was a band of free men, 
every one an athlete and able to use weapons 
which the lighter and weaker Persians could not 
withstand. The onslaught broke on the spears 
and long swords of the Spartan warriors and in a 
minute there was a huddle of beaten, screaming 



258 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

men and plunging horses and demoralized officers. 
Into the broken and defeated ranks plunged the 
Greeks and drove them far down the plain, return- 
ing in safety to their ramparts with the loss of 
hardly a man. Again and again this happened 
and regiment after regiment from the inexhaust- 
ible forces of the Persians were hurled against the 
wall only to be dashed backward and driven 
defeated down the plain by the impenetrable line 
of heavy-armed Greeks. Three times did Xerxes 
the Great King leap from his throne in rage and 
despair as he saw his best troops slaughtered and 
defeated by this tiny band of fighters. For two 
days this went on until the plain in front of the 
wall was covered with dead and dying Persians 
and mercenaries while the Greeks had hardly any 
losses. 

Baffled and dispirited Xerxes was actually on 
the point of leading back his great army when a 
traitor, for a great sum of gold, betrayed a secret 
path up the mountainside. It was none other 
than the bottom of a mountain torrent through 
the shallow water of which men could wade and 
find a way which would lead them safely around 
to the rear of the Grecian army. On the early 



THE THREE HUNDRED 259 

morning of the third day word was brought to 
Leonidas that the enemy had gained the heights 
above and that by noon they would leave the 
plain and entirely encircle the little Grecian army. 
A hasty council of war was called. All of the 
allied forces except the Spartans agreed that the 
position could not be held further and advised an 
honorable retreat. The Spartan band alone re- 
fused to go, although Leonidas tried to save two 
of his kinsmen by giving them letters and mes- 
sages to Sparta. One of them answered that he 
had come to fight and not to carry letters and the 
other that his deeds would tell all that Sparta 
needed to know. Another one named Dienices, 
when told that the enemy's archers were so nu- 
merous that their arrows darkened the sun, re- 
plied, " So much the better, for we shall fight in 
the shade." 

The little band took a farewell of their com- 
rades and watched them march away and then 
without waiting to be attacked, this tiny body of 
three hundred men marched out from behind their 
ramparts and attacked a force nearly ten thousand 
times their own number. Right through the 
slave-ranks they broke and fought their way to a 



26o BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

little hillock where back to back they defended 
themselves against the whole vast army of the 
Persians. Again and again waves of men dashed 
up from all sides against this little hill, but only to 
fall back leaving their dead behind. At last the 
spears of the Spartans broke and they fought un- 
til their swords were dulled and dashed out of 
their hands. Then they fought on with their 
daggers, with their hands and their teeth until not 
one living man was left, but only a mound of 
slain, bristled over with arrows and surrounded by 
ring after ring of dead Persians, Medes, Arabs, 
Ethiopians and the other mercenaries which had 
been dashed against them. So died Leonidas 
and his band of heroes. Nearly ten thousand of 
the Persian army lay dead around them during 
the three days of hand-to-hand fighting. By their 
death they had gained time for the armies of the 
Grecian states to organize and, best of all, they 
had taught Persian and Greek alike that brave 
men cannot be beaten down by mere numbers. 

Leonidas and his band are drifting dust. The 
stone lion and the pillar with the names of those 
that died that marked the battle-mound have 
crumbled and passed away long centuries ago. 



THE THREE HUNDRED 261 

Even the blood-stained Pass itself has gone and 
the sea has drawn back many miles and there is 
no longer the morass, the path or the precipice. 

After the passage of more than twoscore cen- 
turies in a new world of which Leonidas never 
dreamed, in another great war between freedom 
and slavery, this same great deed was wrought 
again by another three hundred men who laid 
down their lives to hold back an enemy and dying 
saved an army and perhaps a nation. Their story 
might almost be the old, old hero story of the 
lost Spartan band. 

The great Civil War was in its third year. Dis- 
aster after disaster had overtaken the Union 
armies. English writers were already chronicling 
The Decline and Fall of the American Republic. 
It was a time of darkness and peril. The great 
leaders who were afterward to win great vic- 
tories had not yet arrived. Under McClellan 
nothing had been accomplished. At the first trial 
Burnside failed at the terrible battle of Fredericks- 
burg where nearly thirteen thousand Union sol- 
diers — the flower of the army — died for naught. 
There was another shift and '* Fighting Joe 
Hooker " took command of the Army of the 



262 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

Potomac. Through continuous defeats, the great 
army had become disheartened and the men were 
sullen and discouraged. It was a time of shame- 
ful desertions. The express trains to the army 
were filled with packages of citizens' clothes 
which parents and wives and brothers and sisters 
were sending to their kindred to help them desert 
from the army. Hooker changed all this. He 
was brave, energetic and full of life and before 
long the soldiers were again ready and anxious 
to fight. Unfortunately, their general, in spite of 
his many good qualities, did not have those which 
would make him the leader of a successful army. 
He was vain, boastful and easily overcome and 
confused by any unexpected check or defeat. En- 
camped on the Rappahannock River he had one 
hundred and thirty thousand men against the 
sixty thousand of the Confederate forces on the 
other side. These sixty thousand, however, in- 
cluded Robert E. Lee, the great son of a great 
father, as their general. " Light-Horse Harry 
Lee," his father, had been one of the great cavalry 
commanders of the Revolution and one of Wash- 
ington's most trusted generals. With Robert E. 
Lee was Stonewall Jackson, the great flanker who 



THE THREE HUNDRED 263 

has never been equaled in daring, rapid, decisive, 
brilliant flanking, turning movements vi^hich so 
often are vi'hat decide great battles. Hooker de- 
cided to fight. By the night of April 30, 1863, no 
less than four army corps crossed the river in 
safety and were assembled at the little village of 
Chancellorsville under his command. His confi- 
dence was shown in the boastful order which he 
issued just before the battle. 

" The operations of the last three days," he de- 
clared, " have determined that our enemy must 
either ingloriously fly or come out from behind 
his defenses and give us battle on our own ground 
where certain destruction awaits him." 

Well might it have been said to him as to an- 
other boaster in the days of old, " Let not him 
that girdeth on his armor boast as him that taketh 
it off." 

The morning of the battle came and Hooker 
said to his generals that he had the Confederates 
where God Almighty Himself could not save 
them. At first Lee retreated before his advance, 
but when he had reached a favorable position, 
suddenly turned and drove back the Union forces 
with such energy that Hooker lost heart and or- 



264 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

dered his men to fall back to a better position. 
This was done against the protests of all of his 
division commanders who felt as did Meade, after- 
ward the hero of Gettysburg, who exclaimed to 
General Hooker, " If we can't hold the top of a 
hill, we certainly can't hold the bottom of it." 

Hooker took a position in the Wilderness, a 
tangled forest mixed with impenetrable thickets 
of dwarf oak and underbrush. Here he hoped 
that Lee would make a direct attack, but this 
pause gave the great Confederate general the one 
chance which he wanted. All that night Jackson 
with thirty thousand men marched half-way round 
the Union Army. Again and again word was 
sent to Hooker that the Confederate forces were 
marching toward his flank, but he could see in 
the movement nothing but a retreat and sent word 
that they were withdrawing so as to save their 
baggage trains. At three o'clock the next after- 
noon Jackson was at last in position. In front of 
Hooker's army lay the main forces of Lee. Half- 
way to the rear of his forces were Jackson's mag- 
nificent veterans. The first warning of the fatal 
attack which nearly caused the loss of the great 
Union Army of the Potomac came from the wild 



THE THREE HUNDRED 265 

rush of deer and rabbits which had been driven 
from their lairs by the quiclc march of the Con- 
federate soldiers through the forest. Following 
the charge of the frightened animals came the 
tremendous attack of Jackson's infantry, the 
toughest, hardiest, bravest, best-trained troops in 
the Confederate Army. The Union soldiers 
fought well, but they were new troops taken by 
surprise and as soon as the roar of the volleys of 
the attacking Confederates sounded from the rear, 
Lee advanced, with every man in his army and 
smashed into Hooker's front. The surprise and 
the shock of possible defeat instead of expected 
victory was too much for a man of Hooker's tem- 
perament. At the time when he most needed a 
clear mind and unflinching nerve, he fell into a 
state of almost complete nervous collapse. The 
battle was practically fought without a leader, 
every corps commander did the best he could, but 
in a short time the converging attacks of the two 
great Confederate leaders cut the army in two and 
defeat was certain. At this time came the great- 
est loss which the Confederate Army had received 
up to that day. Stonewall Jackson's men had 
charged through the forest and cut deeply into 



266 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

the flank of the Union Army. After their charge 
the Confederate front was in confusion owing to 
the thick and tangled woods in which they fought. 
Jackson had ridden forward beyond his troops in 
order to reform them. Tlie fleeing Union sol- 
diers rallied for a minute and fired a volley at 
the little party which Jackson was leading. He 
turned back to rejoin his own troops and in the 
darkness and confusion he and his men were 
mistaken for Union cavalry and received a volley 
from their own forces which dashed Jackson out 
of his saddle with a wound in his left arm which 
afterward turned out to be mortal. At that time 
General Lee sent his celebrated message to Jack- 
son, '* You are luckier than I for your left arm 
only is wounded, but when you were disabled, I 
lost my right arm." 

In a short time the whole Union Army was 
nothing but a disorganized mass of men, horses, 
ambulance-wagons, artillery and commissary 
trains, all striving desperately to cross the Rap- 
pahannock before the pursuing Confederates 
could turn the retreat into a massacre. Unless 
the Confederate pursuit could be held back long 
enough to let the men cross the river and reform 



THE THREE HUNDRED 267 

on the opposite bank, the whole army was lost. 
History is full of the terrible disasters which over- 
take an army which is caught by the enemy while 
in the confusion of crossing a river. General 
Pleasonton of Pennsylvania was in command of 
the rear of the Federal retreat. He was striving 
desperately to mount his guns so as to sweep the 
only road which led to the river and hold back 
the Confederate forces long enough to let his men 
cross. Already the van of the Union Army had 
reached the ford when far down the road appeared 
the whole corps of Stonewall Jackson, maddened 
by the loss of their great leader. Every man that 
Pleasonton had was working desperately to get 
the guns into position, but it was evident that 
they would be captured and their pursuers would 
sweep into the huddle which was crossing the 
river unless something could be done to hold 
them back. As the general looked silently down 
the road, he saw near to him Major Keenan of 
the Pennsylvania cavalry= Keenan had been a 
porter in a Philadelphia store, but his rare faculty 
for handling men and horses had made him one 
of the most efficient cavalry officers of any Penn- 
sylvania regiment. The three companies which 



268 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

were with him were all the cavalry that Pleasonton 
had. They were bringing up the rear of the 
retreat like a pack of wolves who, though driven 
back from their prey, move off sullenly only 
waiting for the signal from their leader to turn 
again and fight. General Pleasonton had rallied 
his gunners and they would stand if only they 
had a chance. There was no hope of bringing 
any order into the mass of broken, terrified in- 
fantry rushing on toward the river. 

•' Major Keenan," shouted General Pleasonton, 
" how many men have you got? " 

"Three hundred. General," replied Keenan, 
quietly. 

" Major," said the general, low and earnestly, 
riding up to him, " we must have ten minutes to 
save the Army of the Potomac. Charge the Con- 
federate advance and hold them ! " 

Keenan never hesitated. When the Six Hundred 
charged at Balaclava, some of them came back from 
the bite of the Russian sabres and the roar of the 
Muscovite guns. When Pickett made that desper- 
ate, fatal charge at Gettysburg, there was still a 
chance to retreat, but Major Keenan knew that 
when three hundred cavalry met the fixed bay- 



THE THREE HUNDRED 269 

onets of thirty thousand infantry on a narrow 
road, not one would ever return. It was not a 
splendid charge which might mean laurels of 
victory, but a hopeless going to death, the buying 
of ten minutes of time with the lives of three 
hundred men, yet neither Keenan nor his men 
questioned the price nor flinched at the order. 

The sunlight of the last day he was to see on 
earth caught the gleam of his uplifted sabre as he 
gave the quick, sharp command to charge. He 
fiung his cap into the bushes, bent his head and 
rode bareheaded in front of his fiying column 
and then like an avalanche, like a hurricane of 
horse, he and his three hundred men thundered 
down the narrow road. Just around the curve, 
with a crash that broke the necks of a score of 
the leading horses, this charging column hurled 
themselves against the astonished, packed ranks 
of infantry rushing on with fixed bayonets. For 
five, for ten, for fifteen minutes horses rose and 
fell to the clashing of dripping sabres and the 
bark of revolvers thrust into the faces of the on- 
coming foemen. For fifteen long minutes there 
was a swirl and a flurry which held back the head 
of the charging forces and then shattered by 



270 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

volley after volley of musketry and pierced by 
thousands of charging bayonets, horse and men 
alike went down. Not one ever came back. 
Keenan and his Three Hundred had bought the 
ten minutes and had thrown in five more for good 
measure and the price was paid. The head of 
the Confederate column reformed, passed over 
and by the struggling horses and the silent, 
mangled men and then again swept on around 
the bend and down the road toward the fords 
crowded with a hundred thousand helpless, escap- 
ing soldiers. General Pleasonton, however, had 
made good use of those precious moments. As 
the Confederate column came around the curve, 
they were met by a hell of grape and canister 
from the batteries which at last had been mounted 
in position. Right into their front roared the 
guns and the road was a shamble of writhing, 
struggling, dying men. No army ever marched 
that could stand up against the grim storm of 
death that swept down that road and in a moment 
the Confederate forces broke and rushed back 
for shelter. The Army of the Potomac was saved. 
Bought at a great price, it was yet to be ham- 
mered and forged and welded under a great 



THE THREE HUNDRED 271 

leader into the sword which was to save the 
Union. 

" Year after year, the pine cones fall, 

And the whippoorwill lisps her spectral call. 

They have ceased, but their glory will never cease, 
Nor their light be quenched in the light of peace. 

The rush of the charge is sounding still. 
That saved the Army at Chancellorsville." 



CHAPTER XIV 
The Rescue of the Scouts 



CHAPTER XIV 
THE RESCUE OF THE SCOUTS 

The man who will risk his life for his friends, 
the leader who never deserts his band, the soldier 
who will not escape alone, these are the men 
whom history has always hailed as heroes. Some 
of the greatest stories of devotion and courage 
have been those which chronicle the rescue of 
men from almost certain death. Courage and 
devotion have often opened the dark doors of 
dungeons, stricken the fetters from despairing 
prisoners and saved men doomed to death from 
the stake, the block and the gallows. 

When the Civil War broke out, the lot of the 
few Union men left in the South was a hard one. 
The fierce passions of those days ran so high that 
not only was a Unionist himself liable to death 
and the confiscation of his property, but even 
his family were not safe. In 1863 there was a 
Georgian who assumed the name of William 



276 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

Morford in order to protect those of his family 
who lived in Georgia from the bitter hatred which 
his services for the Union had aroused. He was 
one of many devoted scouts who worked secretly 
and single-handed for their country, claiming no 
reward if they won and losing their lives on the 
gallows if they lost. Morford throughout 1863 
was attached to the command of General Rose- 
crans and performed many a feat during that 
stormy year. It was Morford who burned an 
important bridge under the very eyes of a Con- 
federate regiment sent to guard it and who, when 
the light from the flames made escape impossible, 
coolly mingled with the guards and actually re- 
ceived their congratulations for his bravery in at- 
tempting to put out the fire which he himself had 
lighted. It was Morford who single-handed cap- 
tured a Confederate colonel while he was sleeping 
in a house surrounded by his regiment and with 
his staff in the next room. Morford obtained ac- 
cess to him under pretense of bearing an impor- 
tant oral dispatch from General Beauregard him- 
self. They were left alone with an armed sentry 
just outside the half-opened door. Stepping to 
one side so that he could not be seen by the 



THE RESCUE OF THE SCOUTS 277 

guard, Morford suddenly placed a cocked re- 
volver close against the substantial stomach of 
the colonel. 

"I have been sent, Colonel," he muttered 
sternly, " to either capture or kill you. I would 
rather capture you, for if I kill you I shall have to 
fight my way out, but it is for you to say which 
it shall be." 

The colonel was a brave officer, but a cocked 
revolver against one's stomach is discouraging 
even for a hero. He decided instantly that he 
much preferred being a prisoner to being a corpse 
and said as much to Morford. 

** Well," said the latter, still in a tone so low 
that the sentry could not make out the words, 
"I'm glad you feel that way. Get your hat and 
tell the guard that you're going to take me out 
for a talk with some of the other officers. I'll be 
right behind you with this revolver in my sleeve 
and if anything goes wrong, two bullets will go 
through the small of your back." 

With this stimulant, the colonel arranged 
matters entirely to the scout's satisfaction. He 
led the way out of the house and through the 
lines, giving the countersign himself, in a some- 



278 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

what shaky voice, and in a short time the two 
found themselves within the Union Hnes. 

" I hope I didn't startle you too much, Colonel," 
said Morford, as he turned his prisoner over to 
the guard. " You weren't in any danger, for my 
revolver wasn't loaded. I didn't find it out until 
just as I got to your lines and I figured out that 
I probably wouldn't have to shoot anyway." 

As this is a book for good boys and girls, it 
would not be proper to set down the colonel's 
language as he looked at the empty chambers of 
Morford's revolver. 

Another time the scout was sent by General 
Rosecrans to find out whether certain steamboats 
were on the Hiawassee and if so, where they were 
located. On this trip he climbed Cumberland 
Mountain and on looking down over the famous 
Cumberland Gap, he discovered a force of Con- 
federates who were busily engaged in fortifying 
the Gap so as to prevent any federal troops from 
passing through it. The force consisted of twenty 
soldiers and forty or fifty negroes who were doing 
the work. Morford made up his mind that it was 
his business as a Union scout to stop all such 
work. Standing out in full sight of the troop, he 



THE RESCUE OF THE SCOUTS 279 

fired his revolver at the officer in command. The 
shot killed the leader's horse, and horse and man 
pitched over into the little troop throwing it into 
confusion. Morford at once fired a second time 
and then turning, waved his hand to an imaginary 
aide and shouted so that the Confederates could 
hear : 

" Run back and tell the regiment to hurry up." 

He then turned to the opposite ridge and 
shouted across the Gap to another imaginary 
force : 

" Lead your men down that path and close in 
on 'em. Hurry up. My men will come from this 
side and we'll beat you down." 

By this time the Confederate officer was on his 
feet again and started to rally his men. Morford 
made a rush toward them, firing his revolver as 
he came, waving his arms in both directions, 
shouting to his imaginary forces and bellowing at 
the top of his tremendous voice — " Come on, 
boys, we've got them now. Surround 'em. Don't 
let a man escape ! " 

The negro workmen felt that this was no place 
for neutrals and they dropped their shovels and 
made a rush for the mouth of the Gap. The 



28o BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

Confederate soldiers stood for a minute, but as 
they saw Morford rushing toward them, they 
broke and followed the workmen. The scout 
chased them until he saw that they were well on 
their way and then started back along the ridge 
chuckling to himself over the way in which they 
had scattered. He laughed too soon. The Con- 
federates had not gone far before they found out 
the trick which had been played upon them. 
They turned back and in a short time fifty men 
were riding along the ridge at full speed to cap- 
ture the Yankee who had fooled them so. Unfor- 
tunately for Morford, he had kept to the path 
along the ridge which was better going, but 
which offered very little chance of escape, since 
on one side was a sheer precipice while on the 
other was a long, bare slope which offered no 
place for concealment. From the top of a little 
knoll he caught sight of the Confederates before 
they saw him. At that time they were only a 
half mile behind. The scout tried to escape by 
running far out on a rocky spur which jutted out 
over the Gap and which was filled with trees, 
hoping that he might dodge in among these, 
double on his pursuers and so get away. The 



THE RESCUE OF THE SCOUTS 281 

same officer, however, whom he had unhorsed 
caught sight of him as he ran from one tree to an- 
other and with a tremendous shout, the whole 
band galloped after him at full speed. Morford 
had hoped that as the way led up a steep hill 
covered with rocks, his pursuers would have to 
dismount, but they were riding horses which had 
been bred in the mountains and which were 
trained to go up and down hill-paths like goats. 
They gained on him fast. Spreading out they 
cut off every chance of his escaping back to the 
slope or skirting their ranks. There was nothing 
left for him to do except to go on and on to the 
very edge of the precipice. The scout knew that 
if he were caught he would be hung on the near- 
est tree and that knowledge was a considerable 
incentive to keep ahead of his pursuers as long as 
possible. He ran as he had never run before and 
as he could follow paths too narrow for the horses, 
for a while he managed to hold his lead. He 
could see, however, that some of the band had 
ridden around the slope and held the whole base 
of the spur so that it would be only a question of 
time before he would be hunted out and caught. 
He was running now along the very edge of the 



282 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

precipice which dropped six hundred feet to the 
rocks below. The gorge narrowed until finally at 
one point it was not more than twenty feet wide. 
This was too wide, however, for the scout to clear, 
even if he were not wearing heavy boots and 
carrying a rifle. Several feet below where he 
stood, on the opposite shelf a hickory tree had 
grown out so that some of the branches extended 
within ten feet of his side of the gorge. Below 
that tree was a fissure through the rock down 
which a desperate man might possibly clamber. 
It was a slight chance, but the only one which he 
had. At this point he was hidden from the Con- 
federates by a wall of rock. Without allowing 
himself to stop, for fear that he would lose his 
nerve, Morford took a run and launched himself 
through the air ten feet out and ten feet down 
against the spreading boughs of the hickory tree. 
He broke through them with a rush but wound 
his arms desperately around the bending limbs 
and though they bent and cracked, the tough 
wood held and he found himself firmly hugging 
the shaggy bark of the trunk with all his might. 
He slid down, ripping his clothes and skin, until 
finally his feet touched the beginning of a possible 



THE RESCUE OF THE SCOUTS 283 

path down to the gorge. He could hear the 
shouts of his pursuers only a few rods away. If 
they had gone to the edge, nothing could have 
saved him, as they would have shot him down be- 
fore he could have escaped, but they beat care- 
fully through the trees and rocks for fear lest he 
should crawl back through their line. Without 
stopping to weigh his chances, Morford let himself 
drop from one shelf of rock to another, clinging 
to every little crevice and every twig and plant 
which he could find. Several times he thought 
he was gone as his feet swung off into the space 
below, but always he managed to get a hand-grip 
on some rock which held, and almost before he 
realized the terrible chance he had taken, he had 
passed down the side of the cliflE and was safe 
around a bend in the rock which hid him from 
view. From there the path was easier and in a 
short time he found himself in the gorge far below. 
There he crawled carefully along behind rocks 
and took advantage of every bit of cover and in 
a few minutes was far on his way, leaving the 
Confederates to hunt for hours every square yard 
of ground on the rocky promontory whence he 
had come. 



284 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

This was but one of many similar adventures 
which made the name of Morford feared and 
hated through the Confederate states. The most 
desperate as well as the most generous of his 
many exploits was his rescue of three fellow- 
scouts who were held in jail at Harrison, Tennes- 
see, and were to be shot on May ist. Morford 
was then in Chattanooga and there heard of the 
capture of these scouts. Chattanooga at that 
time was a Confederate town, although it had a 
number of Union residents. There did not seem 
to be any chance of rescuing the condemned men, 
yet from the minute that Morford heard that these 
scouts were facing death, as he had so often 
faced it, he made up his mind that he would 
rescue them if he had to do it alone. 

Morford's mother's name was Kinmont and her 
earliest ancestor had been Kinmont Willie, cele- 
brated in the border-wars between England and 
Scotland in the latter part of the sixteenth century. 
Many and many a time had she sung to him as a 
child an old Scotch ballad handed down for cen- 
turies through the family, which told of the rescue 
of this far-away ancestor by his leader on the night 
before the day fixed for his execution. In 1596 



THE RESCUE OF THE SCOUTS 285 

Salkeld was the deputy of Lord Scroope, the Eng- 
lish warden of the West Marches, while the Laird 
of Buccleuch, the keeper of Liddesdale, guarded the 
Scotch border. In that year these two held meet- 
ings on the border-line of the kingdoms accord- 
ing to the custom of the time for the purpose of 
arranging differences and settling disputes. On 
these occasions a truce was always proclaimed 
from the day of the meeting until the next day at 
sunrise. Kinmont Willie was a follower of the 
Laird of Buccleuch and was hated by the Eng- 
lishmen for many a deed of arms in the numerous 
border-raids of those times. After the conference 
he was returning home attended by only three or 
four friends when he was taken prisoner by a 
couple of hundred Englishmen and in spite of the 
truce lodged in the grim Castle of Carlisle. The 
Laird of Buccleuch tried first to free him by ap- 
plying to the English warden and even to the 
Scotch embassador, but got no satisfaction from 
either and when at last he heard that his retainer 
was to be hung three days later, he took the 
matter into his own hands, gathered together two 
hundred of his men, surprised the Castle of Car- 
lisle and rescued Kinmont Willie by force of arms. 



286 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

The story of this rescue is told in one of the best 
as well as one of the least-known of the Scotch 
ballads, " Kinmont Willie," the verses of which 
run as follows : 

have ye na heard o' the fause Sakelde ? 

O have ye na heard o' the keen Lord Scroope ? 
How they hae ta'en bauld Kinmont Willie, 
On Haribee to hang him up ? 

They band his legs beneath the steed, 
They tied his hands behind his back ; 

They guarded him, fivesome on each side, 
And they brought him over the Liddel-rack. 

Now word is gane to the bauld Keeper, 
In Branksome Ha' where that he lay, 

That Lord Scroope has ta'en the Kinmont Willie, 
Between the hours of night and day. 

He has ta'en the table wi' his hand, 
He garr'd the red wine spring on hie — 
** Now Christ's curse on my head," he said, 
" But avenged of Lord Scroope I'll be I 

" O were there war between the lands, 
As well I wot that there is none, 

1 would slight Carlisle castell high, 

Though it were builded of marble stone. 

«* I would set that castell in a low. 

And sloken it with English blood ! 
There's never a man in Cumberland, 
Should ken where Carlisle castell stood. 



THE RESCUE OF THE SCOUTS 287 

' But since nae war's between the lands, 

And there is peace, and peace should be ; 
I'll neither harm English lad or lass, 
And yet the Kinmont freed shall be ! " 

He has call'd him forty Marchmen bauld, 
Were kinsmen to the bauld Buccleuch ; 

With spur on heel, and splent on spauld, 
And gleuves of green, and feathers blue. 

And as we cross'd the Bateable Land, 

When to the English side we held, 
The first o'men that we met wi', 

Whae sould it be but fause Sakelde ? 

' Where be ye gaun, ye hunters keen ? " 

Quo' fause Sakelde ; " come tell to me ! " 

' We go to hunt an English stag. 

Has trespass'd on the Scots countrie." 

' Where be ye gaun, ye marshal men ? " 

Quo' fause Sakelde ; " come tell me true ! " 

' We go to catch a rank reiver, 

Has broken faith wi' the bauld Buccleuch." 

* Where are ye gaun, ye mason lads, 

Wi' a' your ladders lang and hie ? " 
' We gang to herry a corbie's nest. 

That wons not far frae Woodhouselee." 

' Where be ye gaun, ye broken men ? " 

Quo' fause Sakelde; "come tell to me ! " 
Now Dickie of Dryhope led that band, 
And the nevir a word of lear had he. 



288 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

" Why trespass ye on the EngUsh side ? 
Row-footed outlaws, stand ! " quo' he ; 
The nevir a word had Dickie to say, 

Sae he thrust the lance through his fause bodie. 

And when we left the Staneshaw-bank, 
The wind began full loud to blaw ; 

But 'twas wind and weet, and fire and sleet, 
When we came beneath the castle wa'. 

We crept on knees, and held our breath, 
Till we placed the ladders against the wa' ; 

And sae ready was Buccleuch himsell 
To mount the first before us a'. 

He has ta'en the watchman by the throat, 

He flung him down upon the lead — 

" Had there not been peace between our lands. 

Upon the other side thou hadst gaed ! 

" Now sound out, trumpets ! " quo' Buccleuch; 
" Let's waken Lord Scroope right merrilie ! " 
Then loud the warden's trumpet blew — 
" O wha dare meddle wi' me?" 

Then speedilie to work we gaed, 

And raised the slogan ane and a', 
And cut a hole through a sheet of lead, 

And so we wan to the castle ha'. 

They thought King James and a' his men 
Had won the house wi' bow and spear ; 

It was but twenty Scots and ten, 
That put a thousand in sic' a stear ! 



THE RESCUE OF THE SCOUTS 289 

Wi' coulters, and \vi* forehammers, 

We garr'd the bars bang merrilie, 
Until we came to the inner prison, 

Where Willie o' Kinniont he did lie. 

And when we cam to the lower prison, 
Where Willie o' Kinmont he did lie — 
*' O sleep ye, wake ye, Kinmont Willie, 
Upon the morn that thou's to die ? " 

"01 sleep saft, and I wake aft, 

It's lang since sleeping was fley'd frae me ; 
Gie my service back to my wife and bairns, 
And a' gude fellows that spier for me." 

Then Red Rowan has hente him up. 
The starkest man in Teviotdale — 
" Abide, abide now, Red Rowan, 

Till of my Lord Scroope I take farewell. 

" Farewell, farewell, my gude Lord Scroope ! 

My gude Lord Scroope, farewell ! " he cried — 
" I'll pay you for my lodging maill, 

When first we meet on the Border side." 

Then shoulder high, with shout and cry. 

We bore him down the ladder lang ; 
At every stride Red Rowan made, 

I wot the Kinmont's aims play'd clang. 

" O mony a time," quo' Kinmont Willie, 

" I have ridden horse baith wild and wood; 
But a rougher beast than Red Rowan 
I ween my legs have ne'er bestrode. 



290 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

" And mony a time," quo' Kinmont Willie, 
" I've prick'd a horse out oure the furs; 
But since the day I back'd a steed, 
I never wore sic cumbrous spurs." 

We scarce had won the Staneshaw-bank, 
When a' the Carlisle bells were rung, 

And a thousand men on horse and foot 
Cam wi' the keen Lord Scroope along. 

Buccleuch has turn'd to Eden Water, 
Even where it flow'd frae bank to brim, 

And he has plunged in wi' a' his band, 
And safely swam them through the strem. 

He turn'd him on the other side. 

And at Lord Scroope his glove flung he — 
** If ye like na my visit in merry England, 
In fair Scotland come visit me ! " 

All sore astonish 'd stood Lord Scroope, 

He stood as still as rock of stane ; 
He scarcely dared to trew his eyes. 

When through the water they had gone. 

*' He is either himsell a devil fra hell, 
Or else his mother a witch maun be ; 
I wadna have ridden that wan water. 
For a' the govvd in Christentie." 

The memory of that brave rescue nearly three 
hundred years before, as the scout afterward told 
his friends, was what inspired him to save his 



THE RESCUE OF THE SCOUTS 291 

fellow-scouts as Buccleuch had saved the first 
William Kinmont. By saving the lives of these 
three men he would pay with interest for the life 
of his ancestor. Shakespeare writes somewhere 
that the good which men do is oft buried with 
their bones, but that their evil deeds live on for- 
ever. No more mistaken lines have ever been 
written. Evil brings about its own death. No 
good deed is ever forgotten or ever buried. 
Hundreds of years later it may flash out through 
the dust of centuries and light the path of high 
endeavor. 

Morford scoured Chattanooga and finally found 
nine men who were ready to go with him and try 
to rescue the condemned scouts. Leaving Chat- 
tanooga they traveled by night and hid by day 
in caves and thickets among the mountains. Oc- 
casionally they would meet or get word from men 
whom they knew to be Union sympathizers. 
Finally they hid on the top of Bear Mountain 
which towered above the river and which sep- 
arated them from Harrison where was located the 
jail. Although they had traveled fast and far 
they were only just in time. The second noon 
after the night when they reached the mountain 



292 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

had been fixed for the execution. On Bear 
Mountain they hid in a cave which Morford him- 
self had discovered when hunting there many 
years before. It could only be reached by a nar- 
row path which ran along a shelf of rock which 
jutted out over a precipice three hundred feet 
deep. The path turned sharply and led under an 
enormous overhanging ledge and ended in a deep 
cave with a little mountain spring bubbling up 
on a mossy slope only ten feet wide which led up 
to the cave's entrance. Inside was a dry, high 
cavern large enough to hold fifty men. It could 
not be reached from above by reason of the over- 
hanging ledge. At that point the path stopped 
and where the slope ended was a sheer drop to 
the rocks below which extended around the farther 
side of the slope so that the only entrance was 
around the path's bend along which only one man 
could pass at a time. Morford reached the foot 
of Bear Mountain just at sunset and led his little 
band up the steep side by a winding deer-path, 
the entrance to which was concealed in a tangled 
thicket of green briar and could only be reached 
by crawling underneath the sharp thorns like 
snakes. The path to the cave was no place for a 



THE RESCUE OF THE SCOUTS 293 

man with weak nerves. It was bad enough as it 
skirted the precipice, but where it took a sharp 
bend around the jutting point of rock, it narrowed 
to nothing more than a foothold not three inches 
wide. He who would pass into the cave must 
turn with his back to the precipice and edge his 
way with arms outstretched along the smooth face 
of the rock for nearly ten feet. The point at the 
turn was the worst. There it was necessary to 
take one foot off the ledge and grope for a tiny 
foothold below the path while one shuffled around 
the curve. It was not absolutely necessary for 
Morford and his men to spend the night in this 
cave. There were other places where they could 
have stayed in safety, as no one suspected their 
presence. Morford, however, had made up his 
mind to choose his men with the utmost care. It 
was necessary in order to save the lives of the 
three condemned scouts to pass through the camp 
of the soldiers and the ring of guards encircling 
the jail, break open the jail, rescue the prisoners 
and break out again. It was a desperate chance 
and Morford's only hope of success was to have 
men who would show absolute coolness and dar- 
ing throughout the whole adventure. The nine 



294 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

men whom he had selected all bore a high repu- 
tation for courage, but Morford decided like 
Gideon of old to cut out every factor of weakness 
and leave only the picked men. When Gideon 
was chosen of God to rescue the children of Israel 
from the unnumbered host of Midianites and 
Amalekites and the other Bedouin hordes of the 
desert which were encamped in the great valley 
that lay at the hill of Moreh, he started with a 
force of thirty-two thousand. When this army 
looked down upon the innumerable hosts of the 
fierce desert warriors, it began to weaken and 
Gideon sent back twenty-two thousand soldiers 
who had showed signs of fear. The night before 
the day fixed for battle, Gideon decided to select 
from this ten thousand a picked band of men who 
would be not only brave, but watchful and ready 
for any emergency. As his army swarmed down 
to the water-hole Gideon watched the men as they 
drank. They had kept watch and ward on that 
bare sun-smitten mountain top all through the 
long, hot day. As they came to the water some 
of the thirsty men dashed forward out of the ranks 
and fell on their faces and lapped the water like 
dogs without a thought that there might be an 



THE RESCUE OF THE SCOUTS 295 

ambush at the ford and without a care that they 
were lying absolutely defenseless before any 
enemy who might attack them. Others kneeled 
on their hands and knees and drank. Of the ten 
thousand only three hundred had bravery and 
self-control enough to maintain the discipline of 
a vigilant army. Without laying down their 
weapons they drank as a deer drinks, watching 
on every side for fear of a surprise. With one hand 
they scooped up the water, in the other they held 
fast their weapon. It was slower, but it was safer. 
These three hundred men Gideon chose for that 
band which for three thousand years has been the 
symbol of bravery and watchfulness. With this 
little force just before dawn he burst down upon 
the sleeping Midianites which were as the sand 
by the sea for multitude. The three hundred 
were divided into three companies. Each man 
carried a sword, a trumpet, and an earthenware 
pitcher with a lighted lamp inside. From three 
separate directions they rushed down upon the 
sleeping foe and sounded the trumpets and brake 
the pitchers and held the flashing lamps on high 
and then shouting as their watchword, " The 
Sword of the Lord and of Gideon," they burst 



296 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

into the great camp of the invaders. Roused 
from sleep, hearing the trumpet notes and the 
crash of the breaking pitchers and seeing the 
flash of lights from all sides and mighty voices 
shouting the fierce slogan, the Midianites scat- 
tered like sheep and all that great host ran and 
cried and fled and every man's sword was against 
his fellow in the darkness, and when day dawned 
the ground was covered with dead men, the camp 
was abandoned and nothing was left of that 
mighty army but a fringe of fugitives scattered in 
every direction. 

It may be that some such test was in Morford's 
mind as the little band of nine scaled the heights 
of Bear Mountain. At any rate as they ap- 
proached the precipice-path he halted them. 

" Boys," he said, " I got word this afternoon 
that these scouts have only thirty-six hours to live 
unless we save them. The guards have been 
doubled. It's going to be a desperate chance to 
get to them and none of us may ever come back. 
Now if any of you fellows want to quit, the time 
to do it is now rather than later. I'm going to 
lead the way along the path which we used to say 
was the best nerve-tonic in this county. If any of 



THE RESCUE OF THE SCOUTS 297 

you fellows get discouraged and don't want to 
make the last turn past old Double-Trouble, why- 
back out, go over the top of the mountain and 
down the other side. You know your way home 
and you've got provisions enough to last for the 
trip. Only travel fast, for those of us who are left 
are going to come right over the top of this moun- 
tain on the run with those scouts — if we save 
'em." 

With this characteristic oration, Morford started 
along the path, first tightening his heavy revolver 
belt so that it might not swing out and over- 
balance him at the critical moment. He was in- 
stantly followed by six others, quiet, self-contained 
men who like him had taken up scouting as the 
best way of showing their devotion to the Union. 
The other three hesitated a moment, looked at 
each other shamefacedly and then slowly followed 
along the dangerous route. As Morford reached 
Double-Trouble, he stopped and in a low voice 
told the next man how to put one foot out into 
space and search for the little foothold which 
jutted out below the main path and then how to 
swing around that desperate curve. Slowly and 
with infinite caution each one of the six followed 



298 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

their leader and found himself safe on the slope of 
the cave. The seventh man listened carefully to 
the instructions of the man before him as to how 
he should round the curve and gave a gasp of 
horror when he found that he must balance him- 
self on one foot on a three-inch ledge while the 
other was in mid-air. 

"Tell General Morford," he finally said, "that I 
ain't no tight-rope walker. I draw the line at 
holdin' on like a fly, head downward over this old 
precipice. Anyway I don't think there's any 
chance to do anything and I'm goin' home." 

He seemed to have voiced the exact sentiments 
of the other two who had sidled up and with out- 
stretched necks were examining in the faint light 
the curve around Double-Trouble. The last man 
spent no time in any argument. 

" Good-bye, General," he called in a low voice. 
" Go as far as you like — but go without me." 

That was the last Morford and the other six ever 
saw of those men. They reached home in safety 
after some days of wandering, but decided to 
choose another territory where the scouting would 
not be quite so strenuous. Morford and his men 
made themselves comfortable that night. They 



THE RESCUE OF THE SCOUTS 299 

drank deep from the spring and then had a much- 
needed scrub. After a hearty meal they turned in 
and slept Hke dead men through the next day on 
the crisp springy moss, first rolHng a big boulder 
against the side of Double-Trouble so that no one 
could pass. 

Late the next afternoon they awoke and found 
that the path was not so bad the second time as it 
had been the first. Down the mountainside by 
the same concealed route they marched in single 
file and just at dark crossed the river and entered 
the little village of Harrison. There they were 
met by an old man with whom Morford had 
previously communicated. He had obtained by 
strategy the countersign which would take them 
through the soldiers, the guards and to the very 
entrance of the jail itself. Curiously enough, some 
Confederate officer had fixed as the countersign 
that very one with which Gideon had conquered 
so many years ago. " The Sword of Gideon " 
was the open sesame which would take them 
past the guards and unlock the gates which 
ringed about the doomed men. Morford ac- 
cepted it as a good omen. The night before 
he had told his companions the old story of 



300 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

Gideon's test and it came to them all as a direct 
message that God was fighting on their side as he 
had fought of old against even greater odds. 
Morford planned to use Gideon's tactics. He de- 
cided to surprise and confuse his enemy and 
escape in the confusion. He tied the hands of 
two of his band behind their backs and with the 
other four marched directly to the Confederate 
camp, gave the countersign, and stated that he 
had prisoners to deliver to the jail. The sleepy 
sentry passed him through without any comment 
and they marched until they came to the high 
board fence with a double row of spikes on top 
which surrounded the prison-yard. This fence at 
one point touched the edge of a marsh filled with 
rank grass, briars and tussocks. To this point Mor- 
ford had gone earlier in the evening and had bored 
two auger-holes in one of the boards and then with 
a small saw dipped in oil had carefully sawed out 
one of the old timbers, leaving a space just large 
enough to admit of a man passing through. 
There was only one entrance to the prison grounds 
which was through the main gate besides which 
night and day sat two guards. Morford rang at 
this gate and when it was opened, presented him- 



THE RESCUE OF THE SCOUTS 301 

self with his pretended prisoners. One of the 
guards accompanied them to the main jail 
toward which Morford marched with his prisoners 
and two men, leaving the other two behind with 
the remaining guard. Morford had no more than 
passed around the corner when these two sud- 
denly seized the unsuspecting guard at the gate, 
pressed a revolver against his temple and in an 
instant gagged him, tied him up hand and foot 
with rope which they had brought and started to 
the jail to assist the others. Usually the jail was 
only guarded by the jailer and one deputy or 
assistant who lived there with him. To-night, 
however, there was a death-watch of three extra 
men heavily armed stationed around in the 
corridor in front of the cells of the condemned 
men. The jailer opened the door and the sentry 
who had accompanied Morford from the gate ex- 
plained that these were two prisoners coming 
under guard from Chattanooga, and Morford and 
his men were admitted. Every detail had been 
planned out ahead and the prisoners tottered into 
the corridor in an apparently exhausted condition 
and approached the guards who were waiting in 
front of the cells, or rather cages, in which were 



302 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

the condemned men. Suddenly just as the sup- 
posed prisoners came close, the ropes dropped off 
their hands and each of said hands grasped a par- 
ticularly dangerous looking revolver which was 
aimed directly at the heads of the astonished 
guards. 

" Sit still," said one of the prisoners, " and keep 
on sitting still because I have very nervous fingers 
and if they twitch, these revolvers are likely to go 
off." 

The guards followed this advice and in an 
instant were disarmed and roped up like the guard 
at the gate. So far everything had gone like 
clockwork according to program. The jailer, 
however, had yet to be reckoned with. As he did 
not seem to be armed, Morford had stepped 
forward to assist in disarming the guards when 
with a tremendous spring the jailer reached the 
door, pulled it open and with the same motion 
kicked a chair at Morford who had sprung after 
him. Morford tripped over the chair and before 
he could get the door open, the jailer had cleared 
the staircase with one jump and was out of the 
jail, running toward the entrance. Morford and 
two others ran after him, but he had too much of 



THE RESCUE OF THE SCOUTS 303 

a start and reached the gate fifty yards ahead. 
This jailer was cool enough to stop at the gate 
long enough to pull a knife from his belt. With 
this he slashed the ropes of the bound guard, 
pulled him to his feet and they both disappeared 
together through the open gate in spite of a 
couple of revolver shots which Morford sent after 
them. The latter, however, was prepared for any 
emergencies. He told off two of his men to shut 
and bar the gates and to guard against any attack. 
Two others were to run around and around the 
fence on the inside shouting and firing as rapidly 
and as often as their breath and ammunition 
would allow. With one companion he returned 
to the jail and demanded the keys from the 
tethered guard. 

" The jailer's got them. Captain," said one of 
the guards ; " he always carries them with him 
and there isn't a duplicate key in the place." 

There was no time to be lost. Already could 
be heard outside the Confederate camp the shouts 
of the officers to the men to fall in. Only the 
tremendous turmoil which apparently was going 
on inside saved the day for Morford. It would 
have been an easy thing to force the rickety old 



304 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

fence at any point or to dash in at the gate if the 
Confederates had known how small a force of res- 
cuers there were. They, however, believed that 
the jail must have been surprised by some large 
Union force and they spent precious time in throw- 
ing out skirmishers, mustering the men and pre- 
paring to defend against a flank attack. In the 
meantime Morford had rushed into the jailer's 
room and found lying there a heavy axe. With 
this he tried to break into the cells of the con- 
demned men who were shaking the bars and 
cheering on their plucky rescuers. The door of 
the cell was locked and also barred with heavy 
chains. Morford was a man of tremendous 
strength and swinging the axe, in a short time he 
managed to snap the chains apart and smash in 
the outer lock and with the aid of an iron bar 
pried open the door only to find that there was an 
inside door with a tremendous lock of wrought 
steel against which his axe had absolutely no 
effect. Time was going. Already they could 
hear the shouted commands of the Confederate 
officers just outside the fence and Morford ex- 
pected any moment to see the door fly in and 
receive a charge from a couple of hundred armed 



THE RESCUE OF THE SCOUTS 305 

men. As he wiped the sweat off his forehead, out 
of the corner of his eye he saw one of the guards 
grinning derisively at him. This was enough for 
Morford. Dropping the axe, he cocked his re- 
volver and with one jump was beside the guard. 
Placing the cold muzzle of his weapon against 
the guard's temple, he ordered him to tell him 
instantly where the keys were. There's no case 
on record where any man stopped laughing 
quicker than did that guard. 

" I ain't got 'em, Captain," he gasped, " really I 
ain't." 

" I'm going to count ten," said Morford, inflexi- 
bly, "and if I don't hear where those keys are by 
the time I say ten, I'm going to pull the trigger 
of this forty-four. Then I'm going to count ten 
more and do the same with the next man and the 
next. If I can't save these prisoners, I'm going 
to leave three guards to go along with them." 

Morford got as far as three when the guard, 
whose voice trembled so that he could scarcely 
make himself heard, shouted at the top of his 
voice : 

" There's a key in the pants-pocket of each one 
of us." 



3o6 BRA VE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

In spite of the emergency they were facing 
Morford's men could not help laughing at the ex- 
pression on their leader's face as he stood and 
stared at the speaker. 

" I have a great mind," he said at last, " to 
shoot you fellows anyway as a punishment for 
being such liars and for making me chop up 
about two cords of iron bars." 

•' You wouldn't shoot down prisoners. General," 
faltered one of the Confederates. 

" No, I wouldn't," said Morford, commencing 
to grin himself, " but I ought to." 

As he talked he had been fitting the key into 
the locks and with the last words the door opened 
and the condemned scouts were once more free 
men. There was not an instant to lose. Already 
the Confederates were battering away at the front 
gate with a great log and a fusillade of revolver- 
shots showed that the outer guards were doing all 
they could to stand off the attack. It took only a 
moment to arm the scouts with the weapons taken 
from the guards and in a minute the seven men 
were out in the prison-yard. Morford himself 
ran to the gate, stooping in the darkness to avoid 
any chance shots that might fly through and 



THE RESCUE OF THE SCOUTS 307 

ordered the two guards, who were lying flat on 
either side of the gate shooting through the bars 
at the soldiers outside, to join the others at the 
place where the plank had been removed. It 
took only a minute for the men to rush across the 
dark yard and reach the farther corner of the 
fence. Morford sent them through the opening 
one by one. Like snakes they crept into the tall 
grass, wormed their way through the tussocks 
into the thick marsh beyond and disappeared in 
the darkness. They were only just in time. As 
Morford himself crept through the opening last 
the gate crashed in and with a whoop and a yell 
a file of infantry poured into the yard. At the 
same moment another detachment dashed around 
on the outside in order to make an entrance at 
the rear of the supposed Union forces. Morford 
had hardly time to dive under the briars like a 
rabbit when a company of soldiers reached the 
opening through which he had just passed. 

" Here's the place. Captain," he heard one of 
them say in a whisper. " Here's the place where 
they broke in." 

The Confederate officer hurried his men through 
the gap, not realizing that it was really the place 



3o8 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

where the rescuers had broken out. As the last 
man disappeared through the fence, Morford 
crept on into the marsh, took the lead of his men 
and following a little fox-path soon had them safe 
on the other side and once again they started for 
Bear Mountain. They reached the boat in safety 
and in a few minutes they were on the other side 
of the river. Instead of getting out at the landing, 
however, Morford rowed down and made the 
men get out and make a distinct trail for a 
hundred yards or so to a highway which led ofl 
in an opposite direction from the mountain. Then 
they came back and got into the boat again while 
Morford rowed to where an old tree hung clear 
out over the water. A few feet from this tree was 
a stone wall. Morford instructed his men to 
swing themselves up through the tree and jump 
as far out as possible on the wall and to follow 
that for a hundred yards and then spring out from 
the wall some ten or fifteen feet before starting for 
the mountain. When they had all safely reached 
the wall, Morford himself climbed into the tree 
and set the boat adrift and again took charge of 
his party. Some of the younger scouts, who had 
never been hunted by dogs, were inclined to think 



THE RESCUE OF THE SCOUTS 309 

that their leader was unnecessarily cautious. The 
next morning, however, as they lay safe and 
sound on the slope of the cave at the top of Bear 
Mountain and saw party after party of soldiers 
and civilians leading leashed bloodhounds back 
and forth along the river-bank, they decided that 
their captain knew his business. Their pursuers 
picked up the trail which was lost again in the 
highway and finally decided that the men must 
have escaped along the road, although the dogs 
were, of course, unable to follow it more than a 
hundred yards. For three days the scouts lay 
safe on the mountainside and rested up for their 
long trip north. Several times parties went up 
and down Bear Mountain, but fortunately did not 
find the hidden deer-path nor was Morford called 
upon to stand siege behind old Double-Trouble. 
When the pursuit was finally given up and the 
soldiers all seemed to be safe back in camp, 
Morford led his little troop out and following the 
same secret paths by which they had come, 
landed them all with the Union forces at Mur- 
freesboro. 

So ended one of the many brave deeds of a 
forgotten hero. 



CHAPTER XV 
The Boy-General 



CHAPTER XV 

THE BOY-GENERAL 

Boys are apt to think that they must wait until 
they are men before they can claim the great re- 
wards which life holds in store for all of us. His- 
tory shows that courage, high endeavor, concen- 
tration and the sacrifice of self will give the prizes 
of a high calling to boys as well as to men. One 
is never too young or too old to seek and find and 
seize opportunity. Alexander Hamilton was only 
a boy when in New York at the outbreak of the 
Revolution, white-hot with indignation and pa- 
triotic zeal, he climbed up on a railing and in an 
impassioned speech to a great crowd which had 
collected, put himself at once in the forefront 
along with Patrick Henry, Samuel Adams, John 
Otis and other patriots who were to be the leaders 
of a new nation. David was only a boy of seven- 
teen when he was sent to take provisions to his 
brethren in the army of the Israelites then en- 



314 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

camped on the heights around the great battle- 
valley of Elah. There he heard the fierce giant- 
warrior of a lost race challenge the discouraged 
army. By being brave and ready enough to seize 
the opportunity which thousands of other men 
had passed by, he that day began the career 
which won for him a kingdom. 

George Washington was only a boy when he 
saved what was left of Braddock's ill-fated army 
in that dark and fatal massacre and was hardly of 
age when the governor of Virginia sent him on 
that dangerous mission to the Indian chiefs and 
the French commander at Venango. On that 
mission he showed courage that no threats could 
weaken and an intelligence that no treachery 
could deceive and he came back a man marked 
for great deeds. As a boy he showed the same 
forgetfulness of self which he afterward showed 
as a man when he refused to take any pay for his 
long services as general of the Continental Army 
and even advanced heavy disbursements from his 
own encumbered estate. 

Napoleon was only a boy when, as a young 
lieutenant, he first showed that military genius, 
that power of grasping opportunities, of breaking 



THE BOY-GENERAL 315 

away from outworn rules which made him one of 
the greatest generals of all time and which laid 
Europe at his feet. If only to his bravery and 
genius had been added the high principle and 
the unselfishness of Washington, of Hamilton, of 
David, he would not have died in exile hated and 
feared by millions of men and women and chil- 
dren whose countries he had harried and whose 
lives he had burdened. 

In the Civil War the youngest general in both 
the Union and the Confederate forces was Major- 
General Galusha Pennypacker, who still lives in 
Philadelphia. He became a captain and major at 
seventeen, a colonel at twenty and a full brigadier- 
general a few months before he became twenty- 
one. His last and greatest fight was at Fort 
Fisher and the story of that day, of which he was 
the hero, is typical of the bravery and readiness 
which made him the only boy-general in the 
world. By the end of 1864 the Union forces had 
captured one by one the great naval ports of the 
Confederacy, the gates through which their armies 
were fed by the blockade-runners of Europe. 
New Orleans, Mobile and Savannah had at last 
fallen. By December, 1864, Wilmington, South 



3i6 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

Carolina, was the only port left through which the 
Confederacy could receive provisions from out- 
side. In that month an expedition was sent 
against the city by sea and land. The river-forces 
were commanded by Admiral Porter while Gen- 
erals Ben Butler and Witzel had charge of the 
land-forces. General Butler conceived the fantas- 
tic idea of exploding an old vessel filled with 
powder close to the ramparts. In the confusion 
which he thought would result, he hoped to carry 
the place by assault. Fort Fisher was the strong- 
est fortress of the Confederacy. Admiral Porter 
afterward said that it was stronger than the fa- 
mous Russian fortress Malakoff, which next to 
Gibraltar was supposed to be the most impreg- 
nable fortification in the world. Fort Fisher con- 
sisted of a system of bomb-proof traverses sur- 
rounded by great ramparts of heavy timbers 
covered with sand and banked with turf, the largest 
earthworks in the whole South and which were 
proof against the heaviest artillery of that day. 
The powder-boat was an abandoned vessel which 
was loaded to the gunnels with kegs of powder and 
floated up to within four hundred yards of the 
fort. When it was finally exploded, its effect 



THE BOY-GENERAL 317 

upon the fortress was so slight that the Confeder- 
ate soldiers inside thought it was merely a boiler 
explosion from one of the besieging vessels. Gen- 
eral Butler and his assistant, General Witzel, 
however, landed their forces, hoping to find the 
garrison in a state of confusion and discourage- 
ment. General Butler found that the explosion 
had simply aroused rather than dismayed the be- 
sieged. From all along the ramparts as well as 
from the tops of the inner bastions a tremendous 
converging fire was poured upon the attacking 
force. Back of these fortifications were grouped 
some of the best sharp-shooters of the whole Con- 
federate Army and after a few minutes of disas- 
trous fighting, General Butler was glad enough to 
withdraw his forces back to the safety of the ships. 
He refused to renew the battle and reported to 
General Grant that Fort Fisher could not be taken 
by assault. General Grant was so disgusted by 
this report that he at once relieved General Butler 
of the command and this battle was the end of the 
latter's military career and he went back to civil 
life in Massachusetts. President Lincoln too was 
deeply disappointed at the unfortunate ending of 
this first assault on the last stronghold of the Con- 



3i8 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

federacy. General Grant sent word to Admiral 
Porter to hold his position and sent General Alfred 
H. Terry to attack the fort again by land with an 
increased force. General Robert E. Lee learned 
of the proposed attack and sent word to Colonel 
Lamont, who commanded the fort, that it must be 
held, otherwise his army would be starved into 
surrender. 

On January 13, 1865, Admiral Porter ran his 
ironclad within close range of the fort and con- 
centrating a fire of four hundred heavy guns 
rained great shells on every spot on the parapets 
and on the interior fortifications from which came 
any gun-fire. The shells burst as regularly as 
the ticking of a watch. The Confederates tried 
in vain to stand to their guns. One by one they 
were broken and dismounted and the garrison 
driven to take refuge in the interior bomb-proof 
traverses. The attacking forces were divided into 
three brigades. The attack was commenced by 
one hundred picked sharp-shooters all armed with 
repeating rifles and shovels. They charged to 
within one hundred and seventy-five yards of the 
fort, quickly dug themselves out of sight in a 
shallow trench in the sand and tried to pick oflf 



THE BOY-GENERAL 319 

each man who appeared in the ramparts. Next 
came General Curtis' brigade to within four 
hundred yards of the fort and laid down and 
with their tin-cups and plates and knives and 
sword-blades and bayonets, dug out of sight like 
moles. Close behind them was Pennypacker's 
second brigade and after him Bell's third brigade. 
In a few moments, Curtis and his brigade ad- 
vanced at a run to a line close behind the sharp- 
shooters while Pennypacker's brigade moved into 
the trench just vacated and Bell and his men 
came within two hundred yards of Pennypacker. 
AH this time men were dropping everywhere 
under the deadly fire from the traverses. It was 
not the blind fire with the bullets whistling and 
humming overhead which the men had learned 
to disregard, but it was a scattering irregular 
series of well-aimed shots of which far too many 
took effect. The loss in officers especially was 
tremendous and equal to that of any battle in the 
war. More than half of the officers engaged were 
shot that day while one man in every four of the 
privates went down. 

When the men had at last taken their final 
positions, the fire of the vessels was directed to 



320 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

the sea-face of the fort and a strong naval de- 
tachment charged, with some of Ames' infantry of 
the land-forces, at the sea angle of the fort. The 
besieged ran forward a couple of light guns 
loaded with double charges of canister and grape 
and rushed to the angle all of their available 
forces. The canister and the heavy musketry 
fire were too much for the bluejackets and they 
were compelled to slowly draw back out of 
range while the Confederates shouted taunts after 
them. 

" Come aboard, you sailors," they yelled ; " the 
captain's ladder is right this way. What you 
hangin' back for?" 

The last words were drowned in a tremendous 
Rebel yell as they saw the bluejackets break and 
retreat out of range. The Confederates, however, 
had cheered too soon. In manning the sea-wall 
they had weakened too much the defenses on the 
landward side and the word was given for all 
three brigades to attack at once. The color-bear- 
ers of all the regiments ran forward like madmen, 
headed by the officers and all sprinting as if run- 
ning a two hundred and twenty-yard dash. The 
officers and the color-bearers of all three brigades 




H 



THE BOY-GENERAL 321 

reached the outer lines almost at the same time. 
With a rush and a yell they were up over the 
outer wall and forming inside for the attack on 
the inner traverses which yet remained. It was 
desperate work and the hardest fighting of the 
day was done around these inner bomb-proofs, 
each one of which was like a little fort in mini- 
ature. The crisis came when the first brigade was 
barely keeping its foothold on the west end of the 
parapet while the enemy which had repulsed the 
bluejackets were moving over in a heavy column 
to drive out Curtis' panting men. It was at this 
moment that the boy-general Pennypacker showed 
himself the hero of the day. He had already 
carried the palisades and the sally-port and had 
taken four hundred prisoners and then wheeled 
and charged to the rescue of Curtis' exhausted 
men. Ahead of them was the fifth traverse which 
must be stormed and crossed before Curtis' men 
could be relieved. Already the men were waver- 
ing and it was a moment which called for the 
finest qualities of leadership. Pennypacker him- 
self seized the colors of the 97th Pennsylvania, his 
old regiment, and calling on his men to follow, 
charged up the broken side of the fifth traverse. 



322 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

His troops swarmed up after him side by side 
with the men of the 203d Pennsylvania and the 
soldiers of the 117th New York, but Pennypacker 
was the first man to fix the regimental flag on the 
parapet and shouted to Colonel Moore of the 
other Pennsylvania regiment : 

" Colonel, I want you to take notice that the 
first flag up is the flag of my old regiment." 

Before Colonel Moore had time to answer, he 
pitched over with a bullet through his heart and 
Colonel Bell was killed at the head of his bri- 
gade as he came in. The gigantic Curtis was 
fighting furiously with the blood streaming down 
from his face. Just at that moment, at the head of 
his men. General Pennypacker fell over, so badly 
wounded that never from that time to this was a 
day to pass free from pain. His work was done, 
however. His men fought fiercely to avenge his 
fall, broke up the enemies' intended attack, freed 
the first brigade and all three forces joined and 
swept through the traverses, capturing them one 
by one until the last and strongest fort of the Con- 
federacy had fallen. The only remaining gate- 
way to the outer world was closed. After the fall 
of Fort Fisher, it was only a few months to 



THE BOY-GENERAL 323 

Appomattox. One of the bloodiest and most suc- 
cessful assaults of the war had succeeded. Gen- 
eral Grant ordered a hundred-gun salute in honor 
of the victory from each of his armies. The 
Secretary of War, Stanton, himself, ran his steamer 
into Wilmington and landed to thank personally 
in the name of President Lincoln the brave 
fighters who had won a battle which meant the 
close of the war. 

General Pennypacker was to survive his wounds. 
This was the seventh time that he had been 
wounded in eight months. At the close of the war 
he was made colonel in the regular army, being the 
youngest man who ever held that rank, and was 
placed in command of various departments in the 
South and was the first representative of the 
North to introduce the policy pf conciliation. 
Later on he went abroad and met Emperor Will- 
iam of Germany, the Emperor of Austria and 
Prince Bismarck and von Moltke, that war-worn 
old general, who shook hands with him and said 
that as the oldest general in the world, he was 
glad to welcome the youngest. 

So ends the story of a great battle where a boy 
showed that he could fight as bravely and think 



324 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

as quickly and hold on as enduringly as any man. 
What the boys of '64 could do, the boys of 191 5 
can and will do if ever a time comes when they 
too must fight for their country. 



CHAPTER XVI 
Medal-of-Honor Men 



CHAPTER XVI 
MEDAL-OF-HONOR MEN 

To-day in the world-war that is being- waged 
in two hemispheres among twelve nations, we hear 
much of the Victoria Cross and the Iron Cross, 
and the decoration of the Legion of Honor, those 
tiny immortal symbols of achievement for which 
men are so willing to lay down their lives and 
which are cherished and passed on from father to 
son as a heritage of honor undying. Not since 
gunpowder sent armor, swords, spears, arrows, 
bows, catapults and a host of other outworn 
equipment to the scrap-heap has the method of 
warfare been changed as it was in the year 1914. 
Battles are now fought in the air and under the 
water and armies move forward underground. 
Automobiles and power-driven cars, trucks and 
platforms have succeeded the horse. Aeroplanes 
have taken the place of cavalry. Vast howitzers 
carried piecemeal on trucks, which can run across 
a rougher country than a horse, have made the 



328 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

strongest fortress obsolete. Bombs which kill 
every living thing within a circle one hundred and 
fifty yards in diameter, vast cylinders of gas which 
turn the air for miles into a death-trap, airships 
which can drop high-power explosives while in- 
visible beyond the clouds, aerial and submarine 
torpedoes which can be automatically guided by 
electric currents from vessels miles away, guns 
that send vast shells a mile above the earth to 
carry death and destruction to a point twenty 
miles away, concealed artillery equipped with 
parabolic mirrors and automatic range-finders 
which can shoot over distant hills and mountains 
to a hair's breadth, and destroy concealed and 
protected bodies of men, rifles which shoot with- 
out noise and without smoke, machine-guns that 
spray bullets across a wide front of charging men 
as a hose sprays water across the width of a lawn, 
wireless apparatus which send messages thousands 
of miles across land and sea, all these and hun- 
dreds of other devices would be more of a 
mystery to Grant and Lee and the other great 
commanders of the Civil War than the breech- 
loading magazine rifles and artillery and iron- 
clads of their day would have been to Napoleon. 



MEDAL-OF-HONOR MEN 329 

The warfare of to-day is fartfier removed from the 
period of the Civil War of half a century ago than 
the Napoleonic wars were from those of Hannibal 
over a thousand years before. 

Methods have changed, but men are the same 
to-day as they were when they first built that 
great tower on the plain of Shinar. The eter- 
nities of life are still with us. Brave deeds, acts 
of self-sacrifice, truth, honor, courage, unselfish- 
ness still stand as in the days of old. Every man 
or woman or child, small or great, can achieve 
such deeds. At the end of this chronicle of the 
brave deeds wrought by our fathers and grand- 
fathers in a war which was fought for an ideal, it 
is most fitting that the boys and girls of to-day 
should read what was done by commonplace men 
as a matter of course. From the great list pre- 
pared by the War Department of the United 
States of those whom their country have honored 
have been selected a few stories of the way differ- 
ent men won their Medal of Honor. 

In 1864 General Sherman was in the midst of 
his great march to Atlanta. Grant had begun 
the campaign against Lee's army which was to 
end at Richmond, while to Sherman was given the 



330 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

task of crushing his rival, Joseph E. Johnston. 
Inch by inch the whole of that march was fought 
out in a series of tremendous battles. One of 
these was the hard battle of New Hope Church 
in sight of Kenesaw Mountain. The battle was 
fought as a successful attempt on the part of 
Sherman to turn the flank of Johnston's position 
at Alatoona Pass. During the battle, Follett 
Johnson, a corporal in the 6oth Infantry, did not 
only a brave, but an unusual deed. While his 
company was awaiting the signal to take part in 
the battle which was raging on their left, they 
were much annoyed by the deadly aim of a Con- 
federate sharp-shooter concealed in an oak tree a 
quarter of a mile away. Every few minutes there 
would be a puff of smoke and the whine of a minie 
bullet, too often followed by the thud which told 
that the bullet had found its billet. When at last 
the sixth man, one of Johnson's best friends, was 
fatally wounded through the head, Johnson made 
up his mind to do his share in stopping this sharp- 
shooting permanently. Unfortunately he was only 
an ordinary shot himself, but he crawled down 
the line and had a hasty conference with one of 
the best shots in the regiment. 



MEDAL-OF-HONOR MEN 331 

" You get a good steady rest," said Johnson, 
" and draw a bead on that oak tree. I'll kind of 
move around and get the chap interested and 
when he gives you a chance, you take it." 

The Union sharp-shooter agreed to carry out 
his part of the bargain. Johnson suddenly sprang 
to his feet and ran in a zigzag course to a position 
farther down the line. A bullet from the watcher 
in the tree shrieked close past his head. 

" Lie down, you fool," shouted his captain. 
" Are you trying to commit suicide ? " 

" Captain, we're fishing for that fellow over in 
the tree," returned Johnson. " I'm the bait." 

" Well, you won't be live-bait if you keep it up 
much longer," said his captain as Johnson again 
took another run while a bullet cut through his 
coat hardly an inch from his side. Johnson did 
keep it up, however. Now he would raise his 
cap on a stick and try to draw the enemy's fire 
in safety. Again he would suddenly spring up 
and make divers disrespectful gestures toward 
the sharp-shooter in his tree. Sometimes he 
would lie on his back and kick his legs insult- 
ingly up over a little breastwork that had been 
hurriedly thrown up. One bullet from the Con- 



332 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

federate marksman nearly ruined a pair of good 
boots for Jolinson while he was doing this, taking 
the heel off his left boot as neatly as any cobbler 
could have done. The hidden marksman, how- 
ever, commenced to show the effect of this chal- 
lenge by this unknown joker. Little by little he 
ventured out from behind the trunk of the tree in 
order to get a better aim. By the captain's orders 
no one fired at him in the hopes that he would 
give the watching Union sharp-shooter a deadly 
chance. At last his time came. Johnson started 
his most ambitious demonstration. He suddenly 
stood up in front of the breastworks in an attitude 
of the most irritating unconcern. Yawning, he 
gave a great stretch as if tired of lying down any 
longer, then he kissed his hand toward the sharp- 
shooter and started to stroll down the front of the 
line, first stopping to light his pipe. The whole 
company gave a gasp. 

" That will be about all for poor old Folly," 
said one man to his neighbor and every minute 
they expected to see him pitch forward. His in- 
difference was too much for the Confederate. 
Emboldened by the absence of any recent shots, 
he leaned out from behind the sheltering trunk 



MEDAL-OF-HONOR MEN 333 

in order to draw a deadly bead on the man who 
had been mocking him before two armies. This 
was the chance for which the Union sharp-shooter 
had been waiting. Before the Confederate marks- 
man had a chance to pull his trigger there was 
the bang of a Springfield rifle a few rods from 
where Johnson was walking and the watching 
soldiers saw the Confederate sharp-shooter topple 
backward. The rifle which had done so much 
harm slipped slowly from his hand to the ground 
and in a minute there was first a rustle, then a 
crash through the dense branches of the oak as 
the unconscious body lost its grip on the limb 
and pitched forward to the ground forty feet be- 
low. Johnson's captain was the first man to 
shake his hand. 

" It takes courage to fish for these fellows 
sometimes," he said, " but it takes braver men 
than I am to be the bait." 

Nearly thirty years later this occurrence was 
remembered and Corporal Johnson awarded the 
medal of honor which he had earned. 

Another man who drew the enemy's fire in 
order to save his comrades was John Kiggins, a 
sergeant in one of the New York regiments. It 



334 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

was at the battle of Lookout Mountain on No- 
vember 24, 1863. The terrible battle of Chicka- 
mauga had been fought. The Union Army had 
been reduced to a rabble and swept ofif the 
field, except over on the left wing w^iere Gen- 
eral George H. Thomas with twenty-five thou- 
sand men dashed back for a whole afternoon 
the assaults of double that number of Confeder- 
ates and earned the title which he was henceforth 
to bear of the " Rock of Chickamauga." The 
defeated army, followed afterward by General 
Thomas' forces, withdrew to Chattanooga, that 
Tennessee battle-ground surrounded by the 
heights of Missionary Ridge and Lookout Moun- 
tain. Here the Union forces were invested on all 
sides by the Confederate Army under General 
Bragg. The supplies of the Union Army gave 
out. The Confederates commanded the Ten- 
nessee River and held all of the good wagon- 
roads on the south side of it. The Union Army 
was nearly starved. General Rosecrans had 
never recovered from the battle of Chickamauga. 
Not only was his nerve shattered, but he seemed 
to have lost all strength of will and concentration 
of purpose. General Grant, who had just been 



MEDAL-OF-HONOR MEN 335 

placed in supreme command of all the military- 
operations in the West, decided to place Thomas 
in command of the Army of the Cumberland in 
place of the dispirited Rosecrans. He tele- 
graphed Thomas to hold Chattanooga at all 
hazards. 

" We'll hold the town until we starve," Thomas 
telegraphed back. 

When Grant reached Chattanooga on October 
23d, wet and dirty, but well, he realized as he 
saw the dead horses and the hollow-cheeked men 
how far the starving process had gone. Al- 
though he was on crutches from injuries received 
from a runaway horse, yet his influence was im- 
mediately felt throughout the whole army. He 
was a compeller of men like Napoleon and, like 
him, had only to ride down the line and let his 
men see that he was there in order to accomplish 
the impossible. He at once sent a message to 
Sherman, who was coming slowly along from 
Vicksburg. His messenger paddled down the 
Tennessee River in a canoe under a guerrilla-fire 
during his whole journey and handed Sherman a 
dispatch from Grant which said, " Drop every- 
thing and move your entire force toward Steven- 



336 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

son." Sherman marched as only he could. 
When his army reached the Tennessee River he 
laid a pontoon bridge thirteen hundred and fifty 
feet in length in a half day, rushed his army 
across, captured all the Confederate pickets and 
was ready to join Grant in the great battle of 
Chattanooga. General Hooker marched in from 
one side on November 24th and fought the great 
battle of Lookout Mountain above the clouds, 
through driving mists and rains and on the 
morning of November 25th the stars and stripes 
waved from the lofty peak of Lookout Mountain. 
The next day eighteen thousand men without 
any orders charged up the almost perpendicular 
side of Missionary Ridge and carried it, and the 
three-day battle of Chattanooga was ended in 
the complete defeat of Bragg's army and the 
rescue of the men whom he thought he had 
cornered beyond all hopes of escape. 

It was during this first day's battle in the mist 
on Lookout Mountain that Kiggins distinguished 
himself. The New York regiment, in which he 
was a sergeant, had crawled and crept up a narrow 
winding path, dragging their cannon after them 
up places where it did not seem as if a goat could 



MEDAL-OF-HONOR MEN 337 

keep its footing. They had aheady come into 
position on one side of the higher slopes when 
suddenly a battery above them opened fire and 
the men began to fall. Through the mists they 
could see the stars and stripes waving over this 
upper battery, which had mistaken them for Con- 
federate soldiers. They were shielded from the 
Confederate batteries by a wall of rock, but it 
was necessary to stop this mistaken fire or every 
man of the regiment would be swept off the 
mountain by the well-aimed Union guns. Ser- 
geant Kiggins volunteered to do the necessary 
signaling. He climbed up on the natural wall of 
rock which protected them from the Confederate 
batteries and sharp-shooters and waved the Union 
flag toward the battery above him with all his 
might. They stopped firing, but evidently con- 
sidered it simply a stratagem and wigwagged to 
Kiggins an inquiry in the Union code. It was 
necessary for Kiggins to answer this or the fire 
would undoubtedly be at once resumed. Un- 
fortunately he was a poor wigwagger and as he 
stood on the wall, he was exposed to the fire 
of every Confederate battery or rifleman within 
range. The perspiration ran down his face as he 



338 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

clumsily began to spell a message back to the bat- 
tery above. Over his head hummed and whirled 
solid round shot and around him screamed the 
minie balls from half-a-dozen different directions. 
Once a shot pierced his signaling flag right in 
the middle of a word. He not only had to re- 
place the flag, but he had to spell the word over 
again which was even worse. The whole message 
did not take many minutes, but it seemed hours 
to poor Kiggins. His life was saved as if by a 
miracle. Several bullets pierced his uniform, his 
cap was shot off his head and when the last word 
was finished, he dropped off the wall with such 
lightning-like rapidity that his comrades, who had 
been watching him with open mouths, thought 
that at last some bullet must have reached its 
mark. Kiggins, however, was unharmed, but 
made a firm resolve to perfect himself in wig- 
wagging. We have no record whether he carried 
out this good resolution, but his unwilling courage 
saved his regiment in spite of his bad spelling and 
won for himself a medal of honor. 

It was at the end of that terrible Wilderness 
campaign of Grant's which in a little more than a 
month had cost him fifty-four thousand nine hun- 



MEDAL-OF-HONOR MEN 339 

dred and twenty-nine men, a number nearly equal 
to the whole army of Lee, his antagonist, when the 
campaign was commenced. Grant's first object 
in this campaign was to destroy or capture Lee's 
army. His second object was to capture Rich- 
mond, the capital of the Confederacy. A special 
rank of Lieutenant-General had been created for 
him by President Lincoln with the approval of the 
whole country. His victory at the dreadful battle 
of Shiloh, his successful siege of Vicksburg and 
his winning above the clouds the battle of Chatta- 
nooga, had made the silent, scrubby, commonplace- 
looking man, with the gray-blue eyes, who never 
talked but acted instead, the hope of the whole 
nation. In this campaign, Grant's one idea was 
to clinch with Lee's army and fight it as hard and 
as often as possible. He fought in the wilder- 
ness, tangled in thickets and swamps. He fought 
against strong positions on hilltops, he fought 
against entrenchments defended by masked bat- 
teries and tremendous artillery. He fought 
against impregnable positions and although he 
lost and lost and lost, he never stopped fighting. 
Lee had beaten McClellan and Pope and Burnside 
and Hooker, all able generals, who had tried 



340 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

against him every plan except that which Grant 
now tried, of wearing him out by victories and 
defeats alike. Grant's army could be replenished. 
There were not men enough left in the Confeder- 
acy to replace Lee's army. It was a terrible cam- 
paign and only a president of Lincoln's breadth of 
view and only the supreme confidence which the 
American people have in a man who fights, no 
matter how often he is beaten, kept Grant in com- 
mand. If, after the bloody defeats in the Wilder- 
ness and at Spottsylvania or at Cold Harbor, he 
had turned back like any of his successors would 
have done, undoubtedly his past record would not 
have saved him the command. It was like the 
celebrated battle between Tom Cribb, the cham- 
pion of England, and Molineaux, the giant black, 
in the eighteenth century for the championship of 
the world. Again and again and again Cribb 
was knocked down by blows so tremendous that 
even his ring generalship could not avoid them. 
Battered and bloody he always staggered to his 
feet and bored in again for more. Molineaux at 
last said to his seconds, " I can't lick a fellow like 
that ; the fool doesn't know when he is beaten." 
It was so with Grant and Lee. Grant never knew 



MEDAL-OF-HONOR MEN 341 

when he was beaten, Lee's generalship could 
knock him down, but could not keep him back, 
and the Confederate leader realized himself that 
sooner or later some chance of war would give 
Grant the opportunity for a victory from which 
the Confederate Army could not recuperate. 

Cold Harbor was the last of this series of defeats 
which helped wear out Lee's army and ended in 
its capture and the occupation of Richmond. At 
the time, however, it was bitter to be borne by the 
millions of men and women and children who 
were hungering and thirsting for a victory of the 
Union arms. Marching and fighting and fighting 
and marching every day for a month, Grant was 
almost in sight of the spires of the Confederate 
capital. About six miles outside the city Lee had 
taken his last stand at Cold Harbor. He held a 
position of tremendous natural strength and had 
fortified and entrenched it so that it was practically 
impregnable. Grant tried in vain to flank it. On 
June 30th he ordered an assault in front Against 
him was the flower of the Confederate Army com- 
manded by the best general of the world and 
securely entrenched in a position than which no 
stronger was ever attacked throughout the whole 



342 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

war. Grant first gave his command to attack on 
the afternoon of June 2d, but then postponed it 
until the early morning of June 3d. Officers and 
men alike knew that they were to be sacrificed. 
All through the regiments men were pinning slips 
of paper, on which were written their names and 
addresses, to the backs of their coats, so that their 
dead bodies might be recognized after the battle 
and news sent to their families at the North. The 
battle was a short one. The second corps of 
General Hancock, one of the bravest and most 
dashing of all of Grant's generals, was shot to 
pieces in twenty-two minutes and fell back with 
three thousand of its best men gone, including 
most of its officers. All along the line the story 
was the same. At some places the Union men 
were beaten back without any difficulty and at 
other spots they penetrated the salients, but were 
driven back. Attack after attack was in vain against 
the generalship of Lee, the bravery of his men and 
the almost impregnable strength of his position. 

Eugene M. Tinkham, of the 148th New York 
Infantry, was in that corps directly under the eye 
of Grant himself which attacked and attacked 
the Confederate position throughout that bloody 



MEDAL-OF-HONOR MEN 343 

morning, only to be driven back eacli time with 
tremendous losses. The 148th Infantry, in which 
Tinkham was a corporal, charged right up to the 
very mouth of the guns. Flesh and blood could 
not stand, however, against the volleys of grape 
and canister which ripped bloody, struggling 
lanes right through the masses of the charging 
men. As the corps of which Tinkham's regiment 
was a part was stopped by the wall of dead and 
wounded men piled up in front of them, the Con- 
federates with a fierce Rebel yell charged over the 
breastworks on the confused attackers. For a 
minute the New York regiment held its own, but 
were finally slowly forced back fighting every 
foot to the shelter of their own rifle-pits. There 
they made a stand and the Confederate sally 
stopped and the men in gray dashed back to 
their own fortifications. In this charge, Tinkham 
received a bayonet wound through his left shoulder 
while a jagged piece of canister had ripped through 
his left arm. Not until he found himself back in 
the rifle-pit, however, did he even know that he 
was wounded. His bayonet and the barrel of his 
rifle were red clear up to the stock and he did not 
at first realize that the blood dripping from his 



344 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

left sleeve was his own. It was only as he lay 
on the dry sand and saw the red stain beside 
him grow larger and larger that he realized 
that he was hurt. One of the few men who 
had returned with him stripped off his coat, cut 
away the sleeve of his shirt and made a couple 
of rough bandages and extemporized a rude 
tourniquet from the splinters of one of the wheels 
of a battered field-piece which had flown into the 
pit. When that was over, Tinkham lay back and 
shut his eyes and felt the weakness which comes 
over a man who has lost much blood. To-day 
there was not the tonic of victory which some- 
times keeps even wounded men up. He had 
seen his comrades, men with whom he had eaten 
and slept and fought for over two years, throw^n 
away, as it seemed to him, uselessly. He was yet 
to learn, what the army learned first and the 
country last, that Grant was big enough and far- 
sighted enough to know that some victories must 
be wrought from failure as well as success. This 
was one of the hammer-strokes which seemed to 
bound back from the enemy's armor without 
leaving a mark, yet the impact weakened Lee 
even when it seemed that he was most impervious 



MEDAL-OF-HONOR MEN 345 

to it. It was absolutely necessary to Grant's far- 
reaching plans that Lee be fought on every 
possible occasion. Whether he won or lost, 
Grant's only hope lay on keeping Lee on the 
defensive. None of this, of course, could a 
wounded corporal in a battered, beaten and 
defeated regiment realize. All he knew was that 
his friends were gone, that he was wounded and, 
worst of all, had been forced to again and again 
retreat. He shut his eyes and there was a sound 
in his ears like the tolling of a great bell. It 
seemed to swell and rise until it drowned even 
the rattle and roar of the battle which was still go- 
ing on. When Tinkham opened his eyes every- 
thing seemed to waver and quiver before him. 
Suddenly there came a short, thin, wailing sound 
which cut Hke a knife through the midst of the 
unconsciousness which was stealing over him. 
It was the cries of two wounded men lying far 
out in the field over which he had come. Tink- 
ham raised his hand and strained his eyes. He 
could recognize two of his own file, men who 
a moment before had been by his side and who 
now lay moaning their lives away out on that 
shell-swept field. Tinkham listened to it as long 



346 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

as he could. Then he set his teeth, scrambled to 
his feet and in spite of his comrades who thought 
that he was delirious, climbed stiffly over the edge 
of the rifle-pit and began to creep out between the 
lines toward the wounded men. At first every 
motion was an agony. He was weakened by the 
loss of blood and he could bear no weight on his 
left arm, yet there was such a fatal storm of bullets 
and grape-shot whizzing over him that he knew 
that, if he rose to his feet, there would be little 
chance of his ever reaching his friends alive. 
Slowly and doggedly he sidled along like a dis- 
abled crab. Sometimes he would have to stop 
and rest. Many times bullets whizzed close to 
him and cut the turf all around where he lay. 
As soon as he had rested a few seconds, he would 
fix his eye on some little tuft of grass or stone or 
weed and make up his mind that he would crawl 
until he reached that before he rested again. It 
was a long journey before he reached his goal. 
On the way he had taken three full canteens of 
water from silent figures which would never need 
them more. When at last he reached the men, 
they recognized him and the tears ran down their 
faces as they called his name. 



MEDAL-OF-HONOR MEN 347 

"God bless you, Corporal," said one; "it's just 
like you to come for us." 

Tinkham had no breath left to talk, but he gave 
each wounded man a refreshing drink from the 
canteens. Both of them were badly, although not 
fatally, wounded. One had a shattered leg and 
the other was slowly bleeding to death from a 
jagged wound in his thigh which he had tried in 
vain to staunch. Tinkham bandaged them up 
to the best of his ability and started to drag them 
both back to safety. With his help and en- 
couragement, each of them crawled for himself 
as best he was able. It was a weary journey. 
During the last part of it, however, he was helped 
by other volunteers who were shamed into action 
by seeing this wounded man do what they had 
not dared. All three recovered and lived to take 
part in the latter-day victories which were yet to 
come. 

Tinkham was but one of the thousands of brave 
men who risked their lives to save their comrades. 
There was Michael Madden who at Mason's 
Island, Maryland, was on a reconnaissance with a 
comrade within the enemy's lines. His com- 
panion was wounded. A number of the enemy's 



348 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

cavalry started out to cut off the two men who 
were at the same time exposed to concentrated 
fire from the enemy's sharp-shooters. Madden 
picked his comrade up as if he had been a child, 
hoisted him to his back and ran with him to the 
bank of the Potomac, and plunged off into the 
water. Swimming on his back, he kept his 
comrade's head up and crossed the river in safety 
with the bullets hissing and spattering all around 
him. 

Then there was Julius Langbein, a drummer- 
boy fifteen years old. In 1862 at Camden, N. C, 
the captain of his company was shot down. 
Langbein went to his help, but found that unless 
he received surgical treatment, he could not live 
an hour. Unstrapping his drum, he ran back to 
the rear and found a surgeon who was brave 
enough to go out to the front with him and 
under a heavy fire give first-aid to the wounded 
officer. Then the two carried the unconscious 
captain back to safety. 

It is a brave man that can rally himself in a 
retreat. Usually men go with the crowd. Once 
let the tide of battle begin to ebb and a company 
or a regiment or a brigade commence a retreat, it 



MEDAL-OF-HONOR MEN 349 

takes not only unusual courage, but also unusual 
will-power for any single man to stand out against 
his fellows and resist not only his own fears, but 
theirs. Such a man was John S. Kenyon. At 
Trenton, S. C, on May 15, 1862, the whole 
column of his regiment, the 3d New York 
Cavalry, was retreating under a murderous fire 
from the enemy. Kenyon was in the rear rank. 
The retreat had started at a trot, had increased to 
a gallop and finally the whole column was riding 
at breakneck speed away from the shot and 
shell which crashed through their ranks. At the 
very height of their speed a man riding next to 
Kenyon was struck in the right shoulder by a 
grape-shot. The force of the blow pitched him 
headlong from the saddle. He still held to his 
reins with his left hand with a death-grip and was 
dragged for yards by his plunging, snorting 
horse. Kenyon was just ahead and knew nothing 
of the occurrence until he heard a faint voice 
behind him calling breathlessly, " Help, John, 
help ! " He looked back and saw his comrade 
nearly fifty yards behind lying on the ground. 
Already his fingers were loosening their grip on 
the rein and the blood was flowing fast from the 



350 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

gash on his shoulder. Behind him the Con- 
federate cavalry came thundering along not a 
quarter of a mile away while the massed batteries 
behind them swept the whole field with a hail of 
lead and steel. John hesitated for a minute and 
for the last time he heard once more the call of 
help, this time so faint that he could hardly hear 
it above the din of the battle. With a quick 
movement, he swung his horse to one side of the 
column. 

" Don't be a fool, John," shouted one of the 
men ahead ; " it's every man for himself now. 
You can't save him and you'll only lose your own 
life." 

It was the old plausible lie that started when 
Satan said of Job, " Skin for skin, all that a man 
hath will he give for his life." It was a lie then 
and it is just as much a lie to-day. 

"Greater love hath no man than that he lay 
down his life for his friend," said our Master. 
Every day when the crisis comes we see men who 
will do that. Kenyon was one of these men. As 
he said afterward, " I should never have been able 
to get Jim's voice out of my mind if I hadn't 
stopped." 



MEDAL-OF-HONOR MEN 351 

It only took an instant to cover the distance 
from the column to the wounded man. Kenyon 
reached him just in time to catch the riderless 
horse which had at last freed his bridle from 
the weak grip of his wounded master. Kenyon 
swung himself to the ground and holding the two 
plunging horses with his right hand, pulled his 
friend to his feet and with a tremendous effort 
finally hoisted him into his saddle again. By this 
time the pursuing cavalry was within pistol-shot 
and the revolver bullets began to sing around the 
heads of the two men. 

" You hang on to your saddle, Jim," said 
Kenyon, " and I'll take care of your horse." 

Bending low in his saddle, he dug his spurs 
deep into his horse's sides, at the same time keep- 
ing his grip on the reins of the other horse and in 
a few minutes the two were back again in the rear 
of the retreating column. All through the retreat 
Kenyon stuck to his comrade and finally landed 
him safely in the field-hospital in front of which 
the Union Army had thrown up entrenchments 
which stopped all further pursuit. 

War, like everything else, is always a one-man 
job. It was the one man Hannibal that took a 



352 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

tropical army of sunburned Arabs, Carthagin- 
ians, Abyssinians, Berbers and soldiers from half 
a score of other southern nations and cut and 
built and tunneled his way through the ice and 
snow and cold of the Alps. Not only did his in- 
domitable will carry his men through an impos- 
sible and unknown region, but it was this one 
man who for the first time in the history of the 
world marched elephants up over the Alps. Over 
two thousand years later it was one man again 
who took a ragged, battered, beaten army and 
marched over the same route and through the 
avalanches and snow-covered peaks and blinding 
snow-storms of the Great Bernard Pass. When 
the men turned trembling back from the brink of 
immeasurable precipices and before cliffs which 
seemed as if they could be climbed only by the 
chamois, Napoleon would order the drums and 
bugles to strike up the signal for a charge and 
up and over his soldiers went. It was this one 
short, frail, little man that fused this army into a 
great fighting machine, marched it over impos- 
sible mountains and swept down into Italy to win 
as great victories as did his fierce predecessor 
twenty centuries before. 



MEDAL-OF-HONOR MEN 353 

The records of the War Department are full of 
instances where men singly did seemingly impos- 
sible things. There was Patrick Ginley, a private 
in a New York regiment. At Reams Station, 
Virginia, the command in which he fought de- 
serted important works which they occupied and 
retreated under the tremendous fire of the ad- 
vancing enemy. Patrick remained. It seemed 
impossible that only one man could do anything 
except throw away his life, but Patrick made up 
his mind that he would accomplish everything 
that one man could. Accordingly as the enemy 
surged up to occupy the works with cheers and 
laughter at the sight of the retreating bluecoats, 
they were suddenly staggered by receiving a tre- 
mendous cannonade of grape-shot which cut down 
the entire first two ranks of the approaching com- 
pany. It was Private Ginley who, single-handed, 
had loaded and sighted the gun and coolly waited 
until the enemy were within pointblank range. 
The Confederates were thrown into confusion. 
They suspected a Yankee trick and thought that 
the retreat had been made simply to lure them 
into close range. In the confusion they fell back, 
although they could have marched in without any 



354 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

further opposition, for as soon as Ginley had fired 
the gun, he escaped out of the rear of the earth- 
works and hastened to another Union regiment 
which was holding its ground near by. Waving 
his arms over his head and shouting like a mad- 
man, he rushed up to the astonished men and 
grabbed the colors out of the hands of the bewil- 
dered color-sergeant. 

" Come on, boys ! " he shouted. " I've got 
some good guns and a nice bit of fortification 
just waitin' for you. Look at the way I drove 
them back all by myself." 

And he waved the colors toward the shattered 
Confederates who were slowly forming into line 
again preparatory to an assault, and started back 
for the works as fast as his legs could carry him. 

" Come on, you fellows," he yelled over his 
shoulder ; " do you want me to drive them back 
twice ? " 

His example was all that was needed. There 
was a cheer from officers and men alike and close 
behind him thundered the charge of the regiment. 
With a rush they swept up over the earthworks, 
drove the Confederates, who had just entered 
from the other side, out headlong, manned the 



MEDAL-OF-HONOR MEN 355 

whole works and in a minute were pouring 
charges of grape and canister from the retaken 
guns which completed their victory. A defeat 
had.?' 'en changed into a victory, eleven guns and 
important works had been retaken from the 
enemy and a regiment of Confederates dis- 
organized and driven from the field. One man 
did it. 

The deeds that most appeal to our imagination 
are single combats — one man against a multitude 
when daring and dash and coolness and skill take 
the place of numbers. History is full of such 
stories. We love to read of that great death-fight 
of Hereward the Wake, the Last of the English, 
when with sturdy little Winter at his back, he 
fought his last fight ringed around with hateful, 
treacherous foes. At his feet the pile of dead and 
wounded men grew high and higher until no one 
dared step within the sweep of that fatal sword. 
At last when Winter had fallen, some treacherous 
coward thrust a spear into Hereward's defenseless 
back. As he lay fallen on his face, apparently 
dead, one of his foemen stepped over to rob him 
of his sword when Hereward struggled to his 
knees and struck forward with his shield so 



356 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

fiercely, the last blow of the last Englishman, that 
he laid his man dead on the field. 

Then there was the death-fight of Grettir the 
Outlaw which Andrew Lang calls one of the four 
great fights in literature of one man against a 
multitude. No boy should ever grow up without 
reading the Grettir Saga which tells how after 
being unjustly driven into outlawry Grettir finally 
took refuge on a rocky island which could only 
be climbed by a rope-ladder. There with his 
brother and a cowardly, lazy servant he lived in 
safety until his enemies hired a witch-wife to do 
him harm. At midnight she cut grim runes into 
a great log of driftwood and burned strange signs 
thereon and stained it with her blood and then 
after laying upon it many a wicked spell, had it 
cast into the sea by four strong men. Against 
wind and tide it sailed to Drangy, Grettir's island 
of refuge. There he found it on the beach, but 
recognized it as ill-fated and warned the servant 
not to use it for fire-wood. In spite of this the 
lazy thrall brought it up the next day and when 
Grettir, not recognizing it, started to split the ac- 
cursed log, his axe glanced and cut a deep gash 
in his leg. The wound festered and the leg 



MEDAL-OF-HONOR MEN 357 

swelled and turned blue so that Grettir could not 
even stand on it. When he was at last disabled, the 
witch-wife raised a storm and under her direction 
a band of his bitterest enemies went out to the is- 
land and found that his servant had left the rope- 
ladder down. One by one they climbed the sheer 
cliff and made a ring around the little hut where 
Grettir and his young brother slept. They dashed 
in the door. Grettir seized his sword and shield 
and fought on one knee so fiercely that they dared 
not approach him. Some of the attackers tried to 
slip behind his watchful sword. 

" Bare is the back of the brotherless," panted 
Grettir and his boy-brother stood behind him and 
fought over him until they were both overborne 
by the sheer weight of heavy shields, and Grettir 
killed, although not until six men lay dead in 
front of the great chieftain. IHugi, the brother, 
was offered his life if he would promise to take no 
vengeance on the murderers of his brother. He 
refused to do this because they had killed Grettir 
by witchcraft and treachery and not in fair fight. 
So they slew him, trying in vain to avoid the 
vengeance which came to them all many years 
later at the hands of another of Grettir's kin. 



358 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

We read also of battles won against what seem to 
us impossible odds. The Samurai stories of old 
Japan have several instances where chieftains 
defeated whole armies single-handed by their 
wonderful swordsmanship. The Bible contains 
several such stories. There is the story of 
Jonathan and his armor-bearer who together cap- 
tured a fortress. Jonathan said to the young 
man that bare his armor, " Come and let us go 
over unto the garrison. It may be that the Lord 
will work for us." And his armor-bearer said 
unto him, " Do all that is in thine heart, behold I 
am with thee." Then they agreed to wait for a 
sign. If when they came before the garrison the 
men should invite them to come up, then they 
would go. If not, they would not make the at- 
tempt. The account goes on to say that when 
they both discovered themselves unto the garrison 
of the Philistines, the men of the garrison cried out 
to Jonathan and his armor- bearer and said, " Come 
up to us and we will show you a thing." And 
Jonathan said unto his armor-bearer, " Come up 
after me for the Lord hath delivered them to us." 
And Jonathan climbed up upon his hands and 
upon his feet and his armor-bearer after him 



MEDAL-OF-HONOR MEN 359 

and they fell before Jonathan and his armor- 
bearer slew after him. In a half-acre of ground 
which a yoke of oxen might plough, these 
two fought and slew and cut their way back 
and forth until the band that held the fort broke 
and fled and the stronghold was captured by the 
two. 

Then there was Jashobeam the Hachmonite, 
one of the first three men of David's body-guard 
of heroes who slew with his spear three hundred 
men at one time. There was Eleazar, who with 
David fought in that bloody barley field when 
these two warriors single-handed dispersed a 
company of Philistines. There was Abishai who 
slew three hundred men. These were the three 
mighty men who were besieged with David in the 
cave of Adullam in the midst of a parched and 
burning desert and David longed and said, " Oh, 
that one would give me to drink of the water of 
the well of Bethlehem that is at the gate." The 
Three heard what their captain said and alone 
they broke through the ranks of the Philistines, 
drew water out of the well of Bethlehem and 
brought it back to David, And David did not 
drink of it, but poured it out to the Lord and said, 



36o BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

*' Lord forbid that I should drink the blood of 
these men that have put their lives in jeopardy for 
me. 

When we read these and other hero-stories, 
we are apt to think that the time for such deeds is 
past and that the men of to-day can never equal 
the accomplishments of the fighters of olden time. 
Yet the Civil War shows stories just as stirring 
and accomplishments seemingly as impossible. 
There was George Wilhelm, a captain in the Ohio 
Infantry. At Bakers Creek he was badly wounded 
in the breast and after he had fallen was captured 
by a Confederate, forced to his feet and though 
faint from loss of blood marched to the Confeder- 
ate camp. As he saw himself farther and farther 
away from his own army a Berserkir rage came 
over him which made him forget his wound and 
his weakness. With one tremendous spring he 
caught his captor around the neck, wrested his 
drawn sabre from out of his hand, slashed him 
over the left shoulder and then picking up the 
loaded revolver which had dropped from the dis- 
abled hand faced him around and marched him 
back to the Union lines a prisoner although, toward 
the end of that journey, Wilhelm was so weak 



MEDAL-OF-HONOR MEN 361 

that he had to lean on the shoulder of his unwill- 
ing attendant. 

There was William G. Whitney a sergeant in 
the nth Michigan Infantry, at the battle of Chick- 
amauga who, just as his men were about to face a 
fierce charge from the Confederates, found that 
their ammunition had given out. Outside the 
Union works was a shell-swept field covered with 
dead and wounded men. Whitney never hesi- 
tated. He leaped over the works and ran back 
and forth over that field, cutting off and loading 
himself down with cartridge-boxes, although it did 
not seem as if a man could live a minute in that 
hissing storm of bullets and shell. Just in time 
he brought back the ammunition which enabled 
his men to beat back the charge and hold their 
position. 

At Rappahannock Station, Virginia, J. Henry 
White, a private in the 90th Pennsylvania In- 
fantry, like David's men brought back water to 
his thirsty comrades at the risk of his own life. 
The enemy had concentrated their fire on the only 
spring from which Union men could get water, 
but White crawled through the grass like a snake, 
covered from head to foot with canteens, filled 



362 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

them every one and crawled back under a fire 
which seemed as if it must be fatal. The Union 
forces were able to hold out and win the fight 
through his brave deed. 

On May 12, 1864, Christopher W. Wilson, a 
private in the 73d New York Infantry at the bat- 
tle of Spottsylvania in a charge on the Confeder- 
ate works, seized the flag which the wounded 
color-bearer had dropped, led the charge and then 
for good measure cut down the color- bearer of 
the 56th Virginia Regiment, captured the Confed- 
erate colors and brought back both flags in safety 
to the Union lines. 

Another color-bearer who won his share of 
battle-glory was Andrew J. Tozier, a sergeant in 
the 20th Maine Infantry at the batde of Gettys- 
burg. Tozier believed that it was the duty of a 
color-bearer having done all to stand fast. At 
the very flood-tide of the fight when it was a 
toss-up tvhich side would be the victor of that 
crisis-battle of the war, Tozier's regiment, which 
was in the forefront, was borne back leaving him 
standing with the colors in an advanced position. 
Tozier stood there like a rock and coolly picked 
of! with his musket every Confederate that at- 



MEDAL-OF-HONOR MEN 363 

tacked him until his ammunition gave out. He 
then pushed forward a few yards until he reached 
the body of one of the soldiers of his regiment 
who had fallen and stooping down, still keeping 
his colors flying, he managed to loosen some car- 
tridges from the dead man's belt. With these he 
recharged his rifle and fought a great fight alone. 
Again and again he would stoop for a minute to 
get more cartridges, but the flag never went 
down. From all over the field the officers from 
the scattered regiment rallied their men and hur- 
ried toward the colors and just as a Confederate 
troop thundered down on Tozier, intending to 
ride over him and carry away the precious flag, 
from every part of the field little squads of fight- 
ing men reached him in time to pour in a volley 
that saved the colors which Tozier for many min- 
utes had been protecting single-handed. That 
was the turning-point of this part of the battle. 
The Maine regiment pressed on and never re- 
treated a foot again through all those days of ter- 
rible fighting. Tozier was one of the many men 
who saved that day for the Union by being brave 
in the face of tremendous odds. 

Freeman C. Thompson of the 11 6th Ohio In- 



364 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

fantry won his medal of honor at Petersburg, Vir- 
ginia. On April 2, 1865, the Union forces were 
storming Fort Gregg. Both sides had poured in 
murderous volleys at short range and then had 
rushed to close quarters, fighting desperately with 
bayonet and butt. Thompson scrambled up on 
his hands and knees, but had no more reached 
the parapet when he was knocked off it headlong 
by a tremendous blow on the head from a clubbed 
musket. When he returned to consciousness he 
found himself lying in the ditch with two dead 
men on top of him. Thompson made up his 
mind that this was not the kind of company 
which he ought to keep and springing to his feet, 
he started again for the parapet. This time he 
was more fortunate for he gained a footing and 
managed to bayonet the first man who attacked 
him, but before he could withdraw the bayonet, 
once again he received a tremendous smash full 
in the face from a clubbed musket and went clear 
over backward with a broken nose. He struck 
on the heap of bodies from which he had just 
emerged and though not unconscious, lay for a 
few minutes unable to move. Finally he man- 
aged to wipe the blood out from his eyes and spit 



MEDAL-OF-HONOR MEN 365 

out the blood and broken teeth from his battered 
mouth. Some men would have felt that they 
had had enough, but not so with this one. For 
the third and last time he scrambled up and as 
he reached the edge of the parapet caught sight 
of the man who was responsible for his battered 
face. Thompson rushed at him and there was a 
battle royal between the two, bayonet to bayonet, 
but Thompson at last by a trick of fence which he 
had learned, suddenly reversed his musket and 
smashed the heavy butt down on his opponent's 
right forearm, breaking the latter's grip on his 
own weapon. Before he could recover, Thomp- 
son's bayonet had passed through his throat and 
Thompson himself had gained a foothold within 
the works. Shoulder to shoulder he fought with 
the rest of his comrades in spite of the streaming 
blood and only stopped when the garrison surren- 
dered. 

It is a brave man in civil life that will give up 
his vacation and it takes a hero to relinquish a 
furlough, that precious breathing spell away from 
battles and hardships back at home with his dear 
ones. Martin Schubert, a private in the 26th 
New York Infantry, had gained this respite and 



366 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

had paid for it by his wounds. Hearing that his 
regiment was about to go into battle again at 
Fredericksburg, he gave up his furlough, hurried 
back to the front and fought fiercely through all 
that brave day. Six men of his regiment, one 
after the other, had been shot down that fatal 
afternoon while carrying the colors. Schubert, 
although he already had one half-healed and one 
open wound, seized the flag when it went down 
for the last time and carried it to the front until 
the very end of the battle, although he received an 
extra wound for doing it. Thirty-one years later 
he received a medal of honor for that day's work. 
It is easier to save a wounded friend or wounded 
comrade than a wounded enemy. He who dares 
death to save one whom he is fighting against 
shows courage of the highest type. Such a 
deed occurred during the battle of Chancellors- 
ville. Those four fatal May-days were filled as 
full of brave deeds as any days of the Civil War. 
Though General Hooker, the Union general, 
flinched and lost not only the battle, but forever 
his name of Fighting Joe Hooker, his men gave 
up only when they were outflanked and out- 
fought and unsupported. 



MEDAL-OF-HONOR MEN 367 

Elisha B. Seaman was a private in one of 
the regiments which was surprised and attacked 
by the twenty-six thousand infantry of Stonewall 
Jackson, the best fighters in the Confederate 
Army. The Union men were not suspecting any 
danger. Word had been sent a number of times 
both to Hooker and to General Howard who com- 
manded the eleventh corps under him that Jack- 
son was crossing through the woods to make a 
flank-attack. Neither general would believe the 
message. Both were sure that Jackson was in re- 
treat. When the attack came the Union troops 
were attacked in front and from the flank and rear 
at once. They held their ground for a time, but 
they were new troops and even veterans could not 
have long sustained such an assault. At first they 
attempted to make an orderly retreat, but the Con- 
federates pressed on them so close and fought so 
fiercely that the retreat became a run and the 
corps of which Seaman's regiment was a part was 
not rallied until they met reinforcements far over 
in the wilderness and gradually came to a halt 
and threw up defenses. There they were too 
strong to be driven back further by the Confeder- 
ates and managed to hold their ground although 



368 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

attacked again and again. After the last attack 
the Confederate forces withdrew and took up a 
strong position on the Union front, brought up 
artillery and opened up a tremendous rifle-fire 
mingled with the cannonade from all their avail- 
able batteries, hoping to throw the Union forces 
into disorder so that they would not stand another 
charge. During the fiercest of the fire while every 
man was keeping close under cover, Seaman's at- 
tention was caught by the sight of a Confederate 
officer who lay writhing in terrible agony not a 
hundred yards outside of the Union lines. He 
had been shot through the body in the last charge 
and had been left on the field by the retreating 
Confederates. The pain was unbearable. Sea- 
man could see his face all distorted and although 
not a sound came through the clenched teeth, the 
poor fellow could not control the agonized twitch- 
ing and jerking of his tortured muscles. Seaman 
tried to turn his face away from the sight, but 
each time his eyes came back to that brave man 
in torment out in front of him. At last he could 
stand it no longer. He slipped back to the rear 
and got hold of a surgeon. 

" Doctor," he said, " there's a fellow out in front 



MEDAL-OF-HONOR MEN 369 

pretty badly wounded. If I get him to you, do 
you think you can ease his pain ? " 

" I certainly can," said the surgeon, " but judg- 
ing from the noise out there in front, you'll lie 
out there with him if you go beyond the breast- 
works." 

" You get your chloroform ready," said Seaman, 
"and I'll get the man." 

A few minutes later Elisha was seen by his 
astonished comrades crawling along the bullet- 
torn turf on his way to the wounded man. 

" Hi there, come back, you lump-head ! " yelled 
his bunkie. " Don't you see the fellow is a 
Reb? You'll get killed." 

" I wouldn't let a dog suffer the way that fel- 
low's suffering," yelled back Elisha, waddling 
along on his hands and knees like a woodchuck. 
He finally reached the officer, forced a little whis- 
key into his mouth and prepared to lift him up on 
his back. 

" Cheer up, old man," he said. " I've got a good 
surgeon back there who says he can fix you up. 
If I can only get you on my back, we'll be safe in 
a minute." 

" You'll be safe enough," gasped the other 



370 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

somewhat ungratefully, Seaman thought, "but 
there will be a dozen bullets through me." 

There seemed to be something in that state- 
ment. Elisha decided that it would be a cruel 
kindness to turn this man into a target for the 
bullets which were coming across the field and 
make him act as his involuntary shield. 

"I'll tell you what I'll do, General," Seaman 
said finally ; " I'll get you up and then I'll back 
down to our lines. If any one gets hit, it'll be 
me. 

He was as good as his word. Although the 
wounded officer was a large man, Seaman got a 
fireman's-lift on him, swung him over his shoul- 
ders and then facing the Confederate lines, slowly 
backed his way toward safety. At first the Con- 
federate fire redoubled as the men in gray thought 
that he was simply effecting the capture of one of 
their men. When, however, they realized that he 
was protecting one of their own officers from 
their fire with his own body, all along the line 
the fusillade of musketry died down and there 
came down the wind in its place the sound of a 
storm of cheers which swept from one end of 
the Confederate position to the other. Seaman 



MEDAL-OF-HONOR MEN 371 

covered the last fifty yards of his dangerous 
journey without a shot being fired at him except 
the shot and shell from the batteries which were 
being worked too far back for the gunners to 
know what was going on. The surgeon with 
whom he had spoken had been attracted to the 
front by the shouts and cheers both from the 
Confederate lines and from Seaman's own com- 
rades and was the first to help him over the 
breastworks. 

" You're a great fool," he said. " I thought you 
were talking about one of our men, but so long 
as you brought this poor Reb in at the risk of 
your life, I'll certainly cure him." 

And he did. 

Another man whose courage flared up superior 
to wounds and mutilation and who was brave 
enough to do his duty in spite of the agony he 
was suffering, was Corporal Miles James, who on 
September 30, 1864, at Chapins Farm, Virginia, 
with the rest of his company was attacking the 
enemy's works. They had charged up to within 
thirty yards of the fortifications when they were 
met by a murderous storm of grape and canister, 
the enemy having held their fire until the very 



372 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

last moment. A grape-shot cut through Corporal 
James' left arm just above the elbow, smashing 
right through the middle of the bone and cutting 
the arm half off so that it dangled by the severed 
muscles. The force of the blow whirled James 
around like a top and he fell over to the ground, 
but was on his feet again in an instant and started 
for the Confederate line like the bulldog that he 
was. 

" Go back. Corporal," shouted one of his 
men. " Your arm's half off and you'll bleed to 
death." 

" No I won't," yelled James ; *' my right arm is 
my fighting-arm anyway." 

" Let me tie you up then," said the man, pull- 
ing him to the ground where the rest of the regi- 
ment lay flat on their faces waiting for the storm 
to pass so that they might charge again. " There's 
plenty of time." 

An examination of the arm showed that it was 
past saving. 

" Corporal," said the other, " you had better 
let me take this arm right off. I can make a 
quick job with my bowie-knife and bandage it. 
If I don't you'll bleed to death." 



MEDAL-OF-HONOR MEN 373 

" All right," said Miles ; " go ahead." 

A minute later the amateur surgeon tied the 
last knot in the bandage which he had made out 
of a couple of bandanna handkerchiefs which had 
been contributed by others of the file. 

"Now, Corporal," he said, coaxingly, "let me 
get you back where you can lie down and rest." 

" No," said Corporal James, " the only resting 
I'm going to do will be inside those works." 

He reached back for the Springfield rifle which 
he had dropped when first struck and fitting it 
carefully to his right shoulder, fired a well-aimed 
shot at a Confederate gunner who was serving 
one of the cannons on the breastworks. As the 
man toppled over the corporal smiled grimly and 
in spite of offers of help from all sides, loaded and 
fired his gun twice again. By this time the fire 
had died down and the corporal suddenly sprang 
to his feet and started for the breastworks. 

"Hurry up, fellows," he shouted to his men; 
" don't let a one-armed man do all the work." 

With a tremendous cheer the whole force sprang 
again to their feet and swarmed over the ramparts 
in a rush which there was no stopping. James 
was right with them, two of his men hoisting and 



374 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

pushing him up, for he found that although he 
could shoot, it was more difficult to climb with 
one arm. As the last Confederates who were left 
surrendered, James sat down against one of the 
captured cannon and smiled wanly at the man 
who had helped him and said : 

" Now I'll take a rest and later on I'll go to the 
rear with you if you like." 

This he did and a regular surgeon completed 
an operation which he said had, under the cir- 
cumstances, been most efficiently performed. 
Corporal James always said that the medal of 
honor which the government gave him was worth 
far more than the arm which he gave the govern- 
ment. 

In the days of David there came a great famine. 
Year after year the crops failed and the people 
starved. At last the priests and soothsayers told 
David that this doom had fallen upon the nation 
because of a broken oath. Many centuries before 
Joshua, one of the great generals of the world, 
was fighting his way into the Promised Land. 
He was contending with huge black giant tribes 
like the Anakim, and against blue-eyed Amorite 
mountaineers with their war-chariots of iron, 



MEDAL-OF-HONOR MEN 375 

whose five kings he was to utterly destroy on that 
great day when he said in the sight of the host of 
Israel, " Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon and 
thou Moon in the valley of Ajalon," and the sun 
stood still and the moon stayed until the people 
had revenged themselves upon their enemies. He 
had captured the fortified city of Jericho and had 
razed it to the ground and laid that terrible 
curse which was afterward fulfilled on the man 
who should again lay the foundation and rebuild 
the city. He had destroyed the city of Ai, little 
but inhabited by fierce fighters who had hurled 
back even the numberless hordes of Israel. The 
terror and the dread of the invaders had spread 
through the length and breadth of the land. On 
the slopes of Mount Hermon lived the Hivites. 
They were not great in war, but like the men of 
Tyre they asked to be let alone to carry on the 
trade and commerce in which they were so expert. 
Not far away from Ai was their chief city of 
Gibeon and the elders of that city planned to 
obtain from Joshua safety by stratagem. They 
sent embassadors whose skin bottles were old and 
rent and bound up and whose shoes were worn 
through and clouted and whose garments were 



376 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

old and worn and their provision dry and mouldy. 
These came to Joshua pretending to be embas- 
sadors from a far country who desired to make a 
league with them. Not knowing that their city 
was in the very path of his march, Joshua and the 
princes of the congregation made peace with 
them. Later on they found that they had been 
deceived, but the word of the nation had been 
passed and the sworn peace could not be broken. 
So it happened from that day that the Gibeonites 
became hewers of wood and drawers of water for 
the congregation and lived in peace with the 
Israelites under their sworn protection. The cen- 
turies passed and at last Saul, the first king of 
Israel, began his reign. In spite of the oath of 
his forefathers, he slew the Gibeonites and sought 
to root them out of the land. It was this broken 
oath that had brought upon the nation the years 
of famine and suffering. Under the advice of 
their priests David sent for the remnants of the 
Gibeonites and asked them what atonement could 
be made for the cruel and treacherous deed of 
King Saul who had long been dead, but whose 
sin lived on after him. The Gibeonites said that 
they would have no silver or gold of Saul or of 



MEDAL-OF-HONOR MEN 377 

his house, but demanded that seven men of the 
race of Saul be delivered unto them. It was done 
and they hung these seven prisoners as a venge- 
ance on the bloody house of Saul. Two of them 
were the sons of Rizpah whom she bore unto Saul, 
the king. When they were hanged, she took 
sackcloth and spread it on the rocks and guarded 
those bodies night and day and suffered neither 
the birds of the air to rest upon them by day or 
the beasts of the field by night. Sleeplessly she 
guarded all that was left of her sons until the news 
of her faithfulness was brought to David, who gave 
back to her the bodies for burial and for the last 
rites of sepulchre and sanctuary which mean so 
much to all believers. 

In the Civil War at Cold Harbor, Virginia, Ser- 
geant LeRoy Williams of the 8th New York Ar- 
tillery, like Rizpah, saved the body of his dead 
colonel and brought it back at the risk of his own 
life for honored burial. During that terrible battle 
in one of the charges of his regiment, his colonel 
was shot down close to the enemy's lines. When 
the shattered remnants of the regiment rallied 
again after they had been driven back by the en- 
trenched Confederates, it was found that the colo- 



378 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

nel was missing. Williams had a profound ad- 
miration and affection for his colonel. When he 
found he was missing, he took an oath before the 
men that were left that he would find him and 
bring him in dead or alive. All the rest of that 
weary afternoon he crept back and forth over the 
battle-field exposed to the fire of the enemy's 
sharp-shooters. Again and again his life was 
saved almost by a miracle, so close did the well- 
directed bullets strike. Finally just at twilight 
close to the enemy's lines he found his colonel. 
He lay as he had fallen, facing the entrenchments 
which he had fought so hard to win, with a bullet 
through his heart. Within a few feet of where he 
lay the Confederate pickets were stationed who 
watched the field and fired at the least suspicious 
movement. Just as Williams identified the body, 
he saw one of the sentries approaching in the 
dusk and had just time to throw himself down 
with outstretched arms beside the dead officer 
when the guard was upon him. Something in 
his attitude aroused the man's suspicions and he 
prodded Williams in the back with his bayonet. 
Fortunately the sharp steel struck him glancingly 
and only inflicted a shallow wound and Williams 



MEDAL-OF-HONOR MEN 379 

had the presence of mind and the fortitude to lie 
perfectly quiet without a motion or a sound to in- 
dicate that he lived. The sentry passed on con- 
vinced that only dead men lay before him. Will- 
iams waited until it became perfectly dark and 
started to drag in the dead body of his officer. 
Inch by inch he crept away from the enemy's lines 
in the darkness until he was far enough away so 
that his movements could not be seen. All that 
weary night he dragged and carried the rescued 
body of the dead officer until just at dawn he 
brought it within the Union lines to receive the 
honors of a military funeral. 

Space fails to tell of the many brave deeds 
which gleam through the blood of many a hard- 
fought field and shine against the blackness of 
many a dark defeat. There was David L. Smith, 
a sergeant in Battery E of the ist New York 
Light Artillery, who, when a shell struck an am- 
munition chest in his battery, exploding a number 
of cartridges and setting fire to the packing tow, 
instead of running away from the exploding cart- 
ridges which threatened every minute to set fire 
to the fuses of some of the great shells, had the 
coolness and the courage to bring a bucket of 



38o BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

water and put out the flames as quietly as if he 
were banking a camp-fire for the night. 

There was Isaac Redlon, a private in the 27th 
Maine Infantry, who shortly before the battle of 
Chickamauga was put under arrest for a gross 
breach of discipline. Isaac saw a chance to wipe 
out the disgrace which he had incurred. Instead 
of staying at the rear with the wounded and other 
men under arrest, he managed to get hold of a 
rifle and fought through the two terrible days of 
that disastrous battle. So bravely did he fight, so 
cool was he under fire and so quick to carry out 
and to anticipate every order that was given, that 
when the battle was at last over, his captain de- 
cided that not only had Redlon wiped out the mem- 
ory of his former misdoing, but that he had earned 
the medal which was afterward awarded to him. 

Another man whose bravery wiped out his mis- 
takes was Colonel Louis P. DiCesnola of the 
4th New York Cavalry. On June 17, 1863, he 
was under arrest when the battle was joined at 
Aldie, Virginia. It was the bitterest day that the 
colonel had ever known when in the guard-house 
he watched his regiment go into action without 
him. He felt that he had ruined his whole career 



MEDAL-OF-HONOR MEN 381 

and that his life through his folly and hot-headed- 
ness was a complete failure. There was granted 
to him, however, as there is to all of us, the op- 
portunity to make amends. While he was still 
moodily watching the progress of the battle, sud- 
denly he saw the men, whom he had so often 
led, waver. Then stragglers began to slip back 
through the lines and suddenly the whole regi- 
ment was in full retreat. Colonel DiCesnola did 
not hesitate a moment. 

•' Open that door," he said to the guard. " I'll 
show those fellows how to fight and I'll come 
back when it's all over." 

Without a word the sentry unlocked the door 
and the colonel rushed out just in time to meet 
the first rank of the flying men. Almost the first 
man that he met was the officer who had taken 
his place, riding the colonel's own horse. DiCes- 
nola gripped the animal by the bridle. 

" Get off that horse," he shouted, " and let some 
one ride him who knows which way to go. He's 
not used to retreating," and before his bewildered 
successor could answer, he was hurled out of the 
saddle and Colonel DiCesnola was on the back of 
his own horse. 



382 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

" About face, charge ! " he thundered to his 
men. Most of them recognized his voice and the 
famihar figure that so often led them and without 
hesitating a moment, wheeled about and followed 
him toward the front. Every few yards his troop 
was increased by men who were ashamed to ride 
to the rear when they saw him charging to the 
front unarmed but waving his hat and cheering 
them on. Before the Confederates could realize 
what had happened they were fairly hurled off 
their feet by the tremendous rush of hurtling men 
and horses. Of all the attacks which are hard to 
withstand, the charge of a body of men who have 
rallied and are trying to wipe out the shame of 
their retreat is most to be feared. It was so here. 
Although the Confederates fought hard nothing 
could hold back the rush of this cavalry regiment. 
They were led by their own colonel who though 
unarmed stayed in the forefront of the battle. As 
they finally broke through the Confederate line, a 
burly cavalryman slashed at him with his sabre. 
Colonel DiCesnola stooped low to avoid the cut, 
but the point of the sabre caught him on the right 
shoulder and ripped deep into his chest while al- 
most at the same moment he received a pistol 



MEDAL-OF-HONOR MEN 383 

shot in his left arm which broke it. Unable to 
hold the reins, he slipped forward and would have 
fallen to the ground, but was held in his saddle 
by his first assailant who forced his horse up close 
beside the colonel's and dashed back through the 
Confederate lines carrying DiCesnola and his 
magnificent horse. There the colonel was made 
prisoner, but was carefully nursed and by the time 
that he had recovered his strength, was exchanged 
and rejoined his old regiment. He reported to 
his general as still under arrest. 

" You are mistaken," said the latter. ** I saw 
the way you rallied your men that day and when 
you were reported missing, we thought you had 
been killed. The charges against you are dis- 
missed and your record is just as clean as it ever 
was and your old regiment is waiting for you." 

The story of William W. Noyes, a private in 
the 2d Vermont Infantry, and his charmed life is 
still told by the veterans who fought at Spottsyl- 
vania. On that day the madness of battle came 
over him. When that happens, life has no value 
except to spend it for the cause for which one is 
fighting. Noyes* regiment had charged up to the 
breastworks of the enemy from which was poured 



384 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

into the attacking forces tremendous volleys. 
Noyes had charged with the others, but when 
they stopped to rally at the breastworks prepara- 
tory to forcing them, Noyes never paused. Right 
up the parapet he scrambled and stood on top of 
the breastworks with his musket in full range of a 
thousand men. Taking deliberate aim he shot 
the man just below him who was aiming his gun 
at him not more than two yards away. In full 
sight of both armies he stood there and loaded 
and fired no less than fifteen shots. Not one of 
them missed its mark. It was in vain that the men 
all around him who were exposed to his fire shot 
at him. The bullets cut through his clothing, car- 
ried off his cap and one stripped the sights of? his 
rifle and ricochetted off the hammer itself, but not 
a wound did he receive. His example spurred 
his comrades on and in a few minutes the whole 
regiment struggled over the earthworks and drove 
out the garrison. 

Joseph von Matre, a private in the ii6th Ohio 
Infantry, did the same thing at Petersburg on 
April 2, 1865, during the assault on Fort Gregg. 
He climbed up the parapet and fired down into 
the fort as fast as his comrades could pass up to 



MEDAL-OF-HONOR MEN 385 

him loaded guns. No bullet could harm him and 
single-handed he drove the men out of that 
embrasure after killing several and forced a gap 
which was filled by the men who climbed up 
when he shouted down to them what he had 
done. 

This chronicle of brave deeds would not be 
complete without the stories of the men who were 
brave enough to disregard all odds either in 
numbers or in circumstances. There was Delano 
Morey, a private in the 82d Ohio Infantry, who 
at McDowell, Virginia, found himself, after the 
charge of the Confederates had been repulsed, 
with an empty gun and no ammunition. Just in 
front of him were two of the enemy's sharp- 
shooters who had been picking ofif the Union 
officers all through the charge. Each of them 
was a dead shot and each of them had a loaded 
gun. Menacing them both with his empty piece, 
Morey rushed forward and called on them to 
surrender. The superb confidence of the man 
was too much for them and without a word each 
of them handed him his loaded rifle and walked 
meekly back with him as prisoners to the Union 
lines. 



386 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

There was Frank W. Mills, a sergeant in a New 
York regiment, who while scouting at Sandy 
Cross Roads in North Carolina, with only three or 
four men under him, suddenly came upon a whole 
troop of the enemy. Without orders and seem- 
ingly without the possibility of succeeding. Mills 
charged down upon the Confederates at the head 
of his regiment, consisting of four men. Cour- 
age took the place of numbers. The Con- 
federates scattered like sheep and Mills and his 
men rounded up no less than one hundred and 
twenty prisoners who stacked their arms and 
marched obediently into the Union lines. 

Augustus Merrill, a captain in the ist Maine 
Infantry, performed a similar feat at Petersburg 
when with six men he captured sixty-nine Con- 
federate prisoners and recaptured and released a 
number of Union soldiers whom they had made 
prisoners. 

The 4th of May, 1863, was a great day for John 
P. McVean, a corporal in the 49th Infantry. On 
that day at Fredericksburg Heights, Virginia, he 
fought at the forefront of his company and when 
the order to charge was given, outstripped them 
all, reached the Confederate lines entirely alone, 



MEDAL-OF-HONOR MEN 387 

shot down the Confederate color-bearer, seized the 
colors and fought back all attempts to retake 
them until his comrades could come to his assist- 
ance. Later in the day he showed that he could 
be just as brave away from the inspiration and 
excitement of battle. Between the lines stood a 
barn which was occupied by a number of Con- 
federate sharp-shooters who were greatly annoy- 
ing the Union forces by picking oflf men at every 
opportunity. McVean's captain finally ordered his 
men to charge on the barn and drive them out. 

" Wait a minute, Captain," said the corporal ; *' I 
believe I can make those fellows surrender with- 
out losing any men. Let me try anyway." 

Without waiting for the captain to reply, the 
corporal laid down his gun and alone and un- 
armed and beckoning as he walked with his hand 
toward the barn, started for the sharp-shooters. 
Seeing that he was not armed they allowed him 
to come within speaking distance. 

•* I have come to take you men prisoners," he 
said positively ; " we don't want to kill you, but if 
you don't come now, we are going to charge and 
this is your last chance." 

The men inside hesitated a minute, but there 



388 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

was such an air of supreme confidence about 
McVean that first one and then another and then 
the whole band of twelve men marched out and 
followed him back to the Union lines. Once more 
a brave man had accomplished the impossible. 

There were no braver men in all the Union 
Army than were found in the ranks of the differ- 
ent batteries whose guns did so much to bring 
about the final victory of the Union arms. The 
courage of our cannoneers, men who saved the 
guns in spite of every attack and who often saved 
them in many a defeat, has never been surpassed. 
The affection of a gunner for the piece which he 
has manned and served in many a hard-fought 
battle is like that which a cavalryman has for his 
horse. Like the rider, the crew of a battery will 
risk all to save their gun. At Wilson's Creek, 
Missouri, on August lo, 1861, Nicholas Broquet, 
a private in one of the Iowa batteries, showed the 
spirit that was in him when the gun that he was 
serving was disabled. The battery-horses had 
been shot down, all the crew except himself had 
been killed by the tremendous fire of the enemy 
and across the field appeared a detachment of the 
enemy's forces sent to capture the gun. Broquet 



MEDAL-OF-HONOR MEN 389 

cut the traces of the dead horses, rushed out be- 
tween the lines in the face of a fierce fire and suc- 
ceeded in catching a riderless horse. He rode 
the animal back to the gun, made him fast to it 
and just as the enemy's detachment was close 
upon him, rode off in safety, trundling the rescued 
gun behind him. 

John F. Chase was a cannoneer of the same 
stamp. At Chancellorsville he was serving as a 
private in a Maine battery. A shell from one of 
the enemy's guns struck down the officers and 
killed or disabled every man of the battery except 
Chase and one other. They manned the gun, 
sighted it as best they could and fired three 
rounds at the approaching enemy. Then as the 
horses had been killed and it was certain that the 
gun would be captured in a few minutes, they 
fastened themselves to the traces and tugged 
away until they got the gun in motion. Al- 
though it was a heavy one which ordinarily took 
two horses to drag it, yet these two actually 
pulled the gun across the rough field safe to the 
main line of the Union forces and saved it from 
capture. 

Three of the most spectacular deeds of the 



390 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

whole war were those of Lieutenant Thomas W. 
Custer, Private Samuel E. Eddy and Adjutant 
Eugene W. Ferris. Custer was a lieutenant in 
the 6th Michigan Cavalry and was present at the 
spirited engagement at Sailors Creek, Virginia, 
when the Union forces attacked the entrenched 
Confederates. Custer's company charged in the 
face of a heavy fire on the enemy's works. 
When they reached the entrenchments the order 
was received to dismount and to continue the 
charge on foot. Custer was riding a thorough- 
bred and preferred to continue the charge on 
horseback. Spurring his horse up to the lowest 
part of the ramparts, he actually leaped him over 
and landed in the very midst of the astonished 
defenders. Making a dash for the color-bearer, 
Custer cut him down, seized the colors and 
wheeled and galloped right through the demoral- 
ized men to the other end of the works, intending 
to capture the colors displayed there. As he 
broke through the ranks of the defenders for the 
second time, a volley of straggling shots was fired 
at him. One bullet pierced his thigh and two 
more struck his horse, killing the latter instantly. 
Custer rolled over and over with the struggling 



MEDAL-OF-HONOR MEN 391 

animal, managed to pull himself loose and still 
clinging to the captured colors, with the blood 
streaming down his leg, rushed at the last color- 
bearer, shot him down with his revolver and 
seized his colors and with his back to the 
rampart, fought off all attempts to rescue them. 
A moment later his companions climbed over the 
earthworks and rescued him just as he was on 
the point of fainting from loss of blood. 

Eddy was a private in the 37th Massachusetts 
Infantry and on April 6, 1865, was present at the 
battle of Sailors Creek, Virginia. While his regi- 
ment was fighting desperately to hold their posi- 
tion, Eddy saw that his adjutant lay wounded far 
out beyond their lines. A litde detachment of 
Confederate soldiers approached and to Eddy's 
horror, he saw them deliberately shoot down sev- 
eral of the wounded Union men. One of them 
approached the adjutant to whom Eddy was 
much attached. He could not bear to see him 
killed without at least attempting to rescue him 
and he at once rushed out beyond the protection 
of his own line. As he approached the adjutant, 
he saw the leader of the Confederate attachment 
in the act of taking aim at the wounded officer. 



392 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

Eddy was an excellent shot and at once knelt 
down and took rapid but accurate aim and killed 
the Confederate just as he was on the point of 
firing. He ran forward to his adjutant, but there 
he encountered three Confederates and had a 
hand-to-hand bayonet fight with them. Eddy 
was a man of tremendous strength and reach and 
managed to kill one of his assailants and severely 
wound another. While he was so engaged, how- 
ever, the third ran him through the body with his 
bayonet and pinned him to the ground. While 
the enemy was struggling to disengage his bayo- 
net for another fatal thrust, Eddy, by a last des- 
perate effort, managed to slip a cartridge into his 
gun and just as his opponent was aiming a deadly 
stab at his throat, shot him through the body. 
Then wounded as he was, he staggered to his 
feet and half-carried, half-dragged the wounded 
adjutant back to the safety of the Union lines 
where they were both nursed back to health and 
strength. 

Ferris was an adjutant in the 30th Massachu- 
setts Infantry. On April i, 1865, at Berry ville, 
Virginia, accompanied only by an orderly, he was 
riding outside the Union lines when he was at- 



MEDAL-OF-HONOR MEN 393 

tacked by five of Mosby's guerrillas. It was not 
the custom of Mosby's men either to ask or give 
quarter or to take prisoners. Ferris who was 
well mounted could probably have escaped, but 
would have had to leave his orderly behind, as the 
latter's horse was a slow one. Accordingly, al- 
though both the men were armed only with 
sabres, Ferris made up his mind to fight to the 
death. Without waiting to be attacked, he 
spurred his horse at the guerrilla-leader and sud- 
denly executing a demi-volte which is only effect- 
ive when performed by a good sabre and a 
trained horse, he whirled like lightning and 
caught his opponent such a tremendous back- 
handed slash that he cut him almost to the saddle. 
As the man toppled over, Ferris slipped one arm 
around his waist and managed to unbuckle his 
pistol-belt and seize both of his pistols. He then 
at once engaged with another one of the band 
and while parrying and thrusting, saw out of the 
tail of his eye a third man aiming a revolver at 
him only a few yards away. Parrying a thrust 
from his opponent in front, Ferris simultaneously 
fired with the other hand. Although Ferris was 
shooting with his left hand, his bullet killed his 



394 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

opponent while the Confederate's fire struck 
Ferris just above the left knee, inflicting a painful 
but not dangerous flesh-wound. Ferris pressed 
his opponent in front still more vigorously and 
finally succeeded in wounding him so severely 
that he turned and bolted, leaving Ferris free to 
go to the rescue of his orderly, who had been put- 
ting up a good fight against the other two of the 
band. Ferris reached him just in time. He had 
been wounded twice and though fighting bravely, 
one of his antagonists had managed to reach a 
position in his rear. There was not much time for 
Ferris to do anything with his sabre. Everything 
must depend upon a pistol shot. Stopping his 
horse, he drew his remaining pistol, took careful 
aim and shot the man behind his orderly through 
the body just as the latter had his sabre uplifted 
for a last blow at the hardly-pressed Union officer. 
The remaining guerrilla, who had already been 
slightly wounded by the orderly, wheeled his horse 
and rode off leaving the two Union men in pos- 
session of the field and the spoils of war, consisting 
of two capital pistols and a magnificent riderless 
horse which they brought back with them. 

One of the most devoted deeds of courage in 



MEDAL-OF-HONOR MEN 395 

the war is chronicled last. On July 21, 1861, the 
first great battle of the war was fought at Bull 
Run, Virginia, not far from the federal capital. It 
was a disastrous day. Unorganized, commanded 
by inexperienced officers, that battle soon became 
the shameful rout which for a long time was the 
basis of the belief throughout the South that one 
Southerner could whip four Northerners. 

Charles J. Murphy was quartermaster on that 
day in the 38th New York Infantry. It was not 
his business to fight. He was there to feed and 
look after his men and it was no more his duty to 
join the battle than that of the surgeons, the band, 
or any of the other non-combatants which ac- 
company a regiment. When, however, he saw 
the masses of beaten, discouraged, panic-stricken 
men straggling back. Murphy made up his mind 
that the rear was no place for him. Seizing a 
rifle which one of the retreating men had thrown 
away, he rushed forward and did all that one man 
could to stop the retreat, fighting as long and as 
hard as he could. It was beyond his power. His 
regiment were bewildered, confused and broke 
and fled like sheep, leaving hundreds of wounded 
men on the field. Murphy made up his mind that 



396 BRAVE DEEDS OF UNION SOLDIERS 

he would have no part or lot in this rout and also 
that he would not desert his wounded comrades, 
for in those days there were terrible tales rife of 
how the Confederates treated wounded soldiers. 
The Union fighters had not yet learned that their 
antagonists were the same brave, fair fighters 
that they were. Murphy stayed behind. When 
the victorious Confederate forces marched down 
the field, they found it held by one man who was 
giving water to the wounded and doing his clumsy 
best to staunch the flowing blood from many a 
ghastly wound. 

" Do you surrender?" shouted the first officer 
who approached him. 

" Not if you are going to hurt these wounded 
men," said Murphy, bringing his bayonet into 
position. 

" We will take just as good care of them as we 
will of our own," the officer assured him, and only 
on this assurance did Murphy surrender. He 
spent years in Rebel prisons, but no prison could 
ever take away from him the recollection that he 
alone had refused to retreat on that disastrous 
day and that he had risked his life and given up 
his liberty to save his wounded comrades. 



MEDAL-OF-HONOR MEN 397 

So ends, with these Httle stories of sudden hero- 
acts wrought by commonplace men in a matter- 
of-fact manner, this chronicle of a few of the 
many, many brave deeds done by our fore- 
fathers in a war that was fought for an ideal. 
Read them, boys and girls, in these war-days that 
we may remember anew the lessons which the 
lives and deaths of our kin hold for us. If the 
day ever comes when we too must fight for ideals 
which other nations have forgotten or have 
trampled upon, may we show ourselves worthy 
of the great heritage of honor which our fore- 
fathers have handed down to us. 




BRAVE 'DEEDS 




S ERl E S 



